Shares in Meta fell more than 20% after Facebook's quarterly total number of daily active users fell for the first time in the company's 18-year history.

The number of people using the social media platform fell slightly in the fourth quarter from a record 1.93bn in Q3, and Meta forecast lower revenues for the current quarter in light of privacy changes on Apple devices, increased competition from apps such as TikTok, as well as macroeconomic and regulatory concerns.

Meta expects to bring in revenues of $27-29bn (€23.9-25.7bn) in the three months to the end of March, which would represent annual growth of up to 11%, but which would be lower than each of the past three quarters.

"On the impressions side, we expect continued headwinds from both increased competition for people's time and a shift of engagement within our apps towards video surfaces like Reels, which [monetise] at lower rates than Feed and Stories," said Meta CFO David Wehner.

"On the pricing side, we expect growth to be negatively impacted by a few factors. First, we will lap a period in which Apple's iOS changes were not in effect and we anticipate modestly increasing ad targeting and measurement headwinds from platform and regulatory changes.

In Association with

"Second, we will lap a period of strong demand in the prior year and we're hearing from advertisers that macroeconomic challenges like cost inflation and supply chain disruptions are impacting advertiser budgets."

Speaking to analysts on a conference call, Wehner later said that Apple's privacy change, which allow iOS users to prevent apps from tracking their online activity for adverts, could cost Meta "in the order of $10bn" in 2022.

Meta reported revenues of $33.7bn (€29.8bn) for the fourth quarter, up from $29bn (€25.7bn) in Q3, with profits before tax increasing 21% quarter-on-quarter from $10.4bn (€9.2bn) to $12.6bn (€11.1bn).

For the full financial year, Meta saw revenues rise 37% to $118bn (€104.4bn), with operating income up 43% to $47.8bn (€41.4bn) and net income increasing 35% to $39.4 (€34.9bn).

The company saw its number of daily users across all its apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, rise 8% year-on-year to 2.8bn, with ad impressions and average price per advert increasing 13% and 6%, respectively, from 2020.

Meta now employs 71,970 people worldwide -- including c.6,000 in Ireland -- an increase of nearly a quarter year-on-year.

"We had a solid quarter as people turned to our products to stay connected and businesses continued to use our services to grow," said CEO CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"I'm encouraged by the progress we made this past year in a number of important growth areas like Reels, commerce, and virtual reality, and we'll continue investing in these and other key priorities in 2022 as we work towards building the metaverse."

(Picture: Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)