What you need to know
- Meta reported Q1 2023 financial earnings with $28.65 billion in revenue, a 3% increase over the previous year.
- Reality Labs lost nearly $4 billion during the quarter, but Meta continues to focus on the Metaverse and AI.
- Meta announced two rounds of layoffs this year, the most recent resulting in roughly 10,000 jobs cut.
After Meta's previous quarter saw a dip in revenue, the company is bouncing back in its Q1 2023 financial earnings report. Meta reported $28.65 billion in quarterly revenue, which represented a 3% increase year-over-year.
This comes after the company announced massive layoffs toward the end of last year, which saw the company cut roughly 11,000 jobs throughout the quarter. According to the earnings report, Meta has "substantially completed the 2022 employee layoffs while continuing to assess facilities consolidation and data center restructuring initiatives."
The company also announced a second round of layoffs in March, which it expects will lead to total costs of roughly $1 billion throughout the year in severance payments. These cuts come as a result of Meta's "Year of Efficiency," which sees Meta restructuring its teams, optimizing workflows, and removing "unnecessary or redundant roles."
"We had a good quarter and our community continues to grow," said Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement, noting that the company is "becoming more efficient so we can build better products faster and put ourselves in a stronger position to deliver our long term vision."
Zuckerberg highlighted a milestone for Facebook, which reached 200 million daily active users in the United States and Canada, showing healthy use of the platform.
He also addressed the rumors that the company is focusing less on the Metaverse. Reality Labs has been a thorn in Meta's side as the division continues to lose money. During Q1 2023, the division lost nearly $4 billion, and revenue was down by 51% due to lower sales of its Quest headset, with losses expected to increase through the year.
Zuckerberg has maintained that the metaverse is a long-term project that he's willing to invest in, despite investor pushback. During the earnings call on Wednesday, he stated that Meta would continue to focus on both AI and the Metaverse, as both work in tandem to enable more VR and mixed reality experiences. He also teased the upcoming launch of the Quest 3 headset, which we expect later this year.
"We launched Quest 2 almost three years ago at this point. It was a very big step forward for VR," Zuckerberg said during the call. "And I'm really excited to show the world all of the improvements and new technology that we have developed since then, at a price point that will be accessible for lots of people."
