The second quarter was as bad as Meta Platforms Inc. executives feared, and the third quarter is expected to be worse. Meta
META
reported its first-ever year-over-year decline in revenue on Wednesday, and profit declined for a third consecutive quarter, the first time that has happened since Facebook’s first year as a public company, in 2012. Shares declined more than 4% in after-hours trading following the release of the results, continuing a downward trajectory for the social-media company’s shares.
The parent company of Facebook reported second-quarter earnings of $6.69 billion, or $2.46 a share, down from $3.61 a share last year, on sales of $28.82 billion, down from $29.08 billion a year ago. Both results missed the average forecast for profit of $2.54 a share and sales of $28.9 billion, according to analysts polled by FactSet. The downfall is expected to get worse. Meta executives issued a third-quarter revenue forecast of $26 billion to $28.5 billion, while analysts were forecasting $30.36 billion. Facebook reported revenue of $29.01 billion in the third quarter last year. “We seem to have entered an economic downturn that will have a broad impact on the digital advertising business,” Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a conferen …