The first year -on -year revenue declined, Meta needed "Yuan Universe" at this moment

This article was original by Sutoo123

Author / Qiao Zhibin

The "Yuan Universe" planned for META for META may not be the beginning of web3, but the continuation of the "post -web2 era" ...

Since last year, "renamed Mingzhi", Meta, who went to the vision of the Yuan universe, has now become the eyes of all the "Yuan universe" practitioners. Any wind and wind can set off the industry.

In the early morning of the 28th Beijing time (July 27, local time in the United States), Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced the second quarter of the second quarter of 2022 as of June 30. According to the financial report, Meta revenue in the second quarter of about 28.8 billion U.S. dollars, a year -on -year decrease of 1%, becoming the first quarter -old revenue decline in the company's history; net profit is about $ 6.7 billion, a year -on -year decrease of 36%; 2.46 US dollars, a year -on -year decrease of 32%.

According to the business line, the core business advertising revenue of Meta in the second quarter was US $ 28.15 billion, a year -on -year decrease of 1.5%, not only reaching the lowest level since the first quarter of last year, but also lower than the analyst's expectations of US $ 28.53 billion.

Faced with the shrinkage of core business, Meta blamed it on the influence of inflation and other factors. Advertisers began to reduce advertising expenditure, which led to the pressure on online advertising sales. At the same time, the chief financial officer David Wehner said, "Due to the broader macroeconomic uncertainty, the company's weak advertising demand throughout the second quarter will continue."

The "Reality Labs" period of META Yuan Universe's related business was only $ 452 million, an increase of 48.2%year -on -year, but the quarterly loss was as high as $ 2.8 billion. More importantly, Meta also predicts that the "reality laboratory" revenue in the third quarter will be lower than the second quarter.

Under the overlapping losses of the shrinkage of advertising business and the huge losses of the actual laboratory business, Meta's second quarter revenue and net profit declined exceeded analysts expectations, and the stock price in the after -trading transaction fell 4.65%.

In addition to the dilemma of revenue, the financial report also shows that as of the end of the second quarter, the total number of Meta employees was 83,553. To this end, it was reported that Meta began to try to put forward new performance requirements to "optimize" the number of employees. Meta's human resources director Lori Goler once said in an internal memorandum that Meta began to operate with "greater intensity". For those employees who did not meet the expected, the company would consider layoffs. Some employees of Meta predict that the company will lay off a maximum of 10%this year. Not only that, Meta also canceled the logistics service outsourcing contract of its Silicon Valley headquarters this month, causing hundreds of workers to be laid off.

From Facebook's renamed Meta at that time, to the shrinking advertising business today, the "reality laboratory" has a lot of losses and continuous personnel changes, so that the industry has to repeatedly question whether the vision of Zuckerberg's "Yuan Universe" is just "water in the water and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon and the moon. "Flowers in the mirror".

However, from the perspective of the Schurvan Universe Research Institute, although the process is full of twists and turns, Meta does not need the "Yuan Universe" more than the moment.

Meta's Internet imagination began to dry up

Judging from Meta's financial report, although the name is very universe, the revenue composition at this stage is very "Internet". According to the financial report, in the second quarter, META advertising business accounted for 97.7%of the total revenue. It can be said that META is a "advertising company" sitting at the entrance of the Internet traffic pipeline.

Therefore, for Meta, how to get more traffic has become the inevitable whether it can sustainable. After Meta announced the fourth quarter and full annual financial reports released in February this year, the stock price appeared "flash collapse", plunging 26%within a day, and the market value evaporated by more than US $ 200 billion.

At that time, many people focused their attention in Meta's 20121 "Real Laboratory Business" losses expanded again, reaching $ 10.19 billion, questioning the correctness of Meta's entry into the Yuan universe. However, in the fourth quarter of 2011, Facebook daily data for the first time in the company's history declined, which also caused a high level of panic in the market. Many people in the industry have pointed out that Meta's existing Internet business growth has encountered a bottleneck. Although in the first two quarters of the following 2022, Facebook's number of daily living users increased for two consecutive quarters, the growth rate of fatigue was still not enough to completely eliminate the industry's concerns.

Regarding the uncertainty of user activity, Facebook executives pointed out that consumer behavior is changing, facing fierce competition from services such as tiktok, all of which will continue to bring adverse factors. The revenue of Facebook -like Tiktok products -REELS products is far less than other core products, and it has not yet been successfully realized.

In addition, the development of the new business is unfavorable, which makes Meta worse. In April this year, it was reported that due to the differences with potential payment partners, Meta failed to launch WhatsApp payment services in Brazil as planned. This means that Meta plans to discount the sources of e -commerce expanded revenue sources at the bud stage.

Under a series of "mildew", Meta can send hope at the new traffic entrance. According to data reports of the global VR headset in the first quarter of 2022 recently released by IDC, the global VR header showed 3.563 million units, of which Meta's QUEST series market share accounted for 90%of the global VR market, becoming the "" VR industry sales " Absolute King ". The greater right to speak also allows Meta to be full of confidence when the "Yuan Universe" seeks new traffic growth points.

"Yuan Universe" will be the beginning of the Meta "post -web2" era

However, just recently, Meta suddenly issued an announcement saying that the price of Meta Quest 2 VR headset will be raised from August 1st because of higher production costs, 128GB versions and 256GB versions have been raised by $ 100. Quest2's price increase also means that Meta's nervous financial pressure and the traditional "Internet" operation methods have begun to change quietly.

For "Internet companies" such as META, operating terminals such as QUEST, core operation ideas are usually sold hardware at the same level or even lower than the cost price, and then rely on software and subscribing services to create revenue, and software subsidy hardware. This means that META is to promote low -cost VR hardware at the expense of profitability.

However, this model brought significant short -term losses to Meta's "Real Laboratory" business, so that eventually it finally ended because of "cost pressure".

The price increase of Quest2 reflects the heavy financial performance of Meta's "Yuan Universe" software and hardware business. As early as April this year, Meta announced that it would provide some commercial tools to specific users to allow them to sell virtual products on Horizon Worlds. The division ratio of 30%aroused dissatisfaction with developers.

However, from the perspective of the Schurgan Universe Research Institute, for the social META, if you want to continue to create more traffic growth for the core advertising business through the Yuan universe business, it will inevitably improve the hardware accuracy of the product. Getting threshold. Zuckerberg also pointed out on the financial report telephone call: "I not only pay attention to how to create a good VR and AR device, but also how to make it become $ 300 instead of $ 1,000. This is for more people to use more people to use It is very important for it. "This means that the cost and price of Quest will not be obviously increased in the future, and it will maintain a cautious style in terms of price exploration.

It can be seen that, for Meta, although the vision of the "Yuan Universe" cannot get out of losses in the short term, it will still be accompanied by questioning, but the first -mover advantage in the VR field is still an important map of new business growth. The Schurvan Universe Research Institute also mentioned in the "2022 yuan universe industry research report" that the Yuan universe is the ultimate immersive social scene, and social networking is also the "adhesive" of the Yuan universe traffic.

The heart of Meta's "Yuan Universe+Social" has been exposed, but the final vision may not be the centralized distribution of the web3 decentralization in its mouth, but the platform of the "post -web2 era" platform.

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