Meta’s shares rose more than 20% despite the fourth-quarter results.
Jim Cramer just can’t be mad at Meta Platforms (GOAL) – Get a free reportand its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Following the company’s earlier earnings report, Cramer apologized to his audience, saying his confidence in Meta’s management team was “misguided” and his bullish arrogance “extraordinary, and I apologize.”
But after this week’s print, Cramer is back on the Meta bandwagon and effusively praising its leader Mark Zuckerberg.
“It was a transformative call because he used the term ‘efficiency’ 16 times. It was a lighthearted conference call from a shareholder point of view. Sobering from a Zuckerberg point of view,” Cramer said.
Though Zuckerberg didn’t say so explicitly, Cramer says he got the feeling Mark is spending less time in the money-losing Reality Labs segment of the company and more time in the bread-and-butter social media segment.
“He’s really very interested in the Meta family. It was a total emphasis on what he had been emphasizing,” Cramer said.
“It was the call you get from a mature company saying ‘don’t worry, we’re going to make money. We’re going to make it through expenses and give you revenue growth, so stick with us,'” Cramer said before qualify the earnings call as “shocking.”
Meta neighborhood
The earnings call must have been really good because the company’s fourth-quarter financial results weren’t all that stellar.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, posted lower-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings of $1.76 a share, well below Street’s forecast of $2.22, thanks in part to a related $4.2 billion charge. with the mass layoffs and last year’s office. closures
Meta topped analysts’ revenue estimates with a tally of $32.17 billion, about 97.2% of which came from ad sales, and while that figure will drop to between $26 billion and $28 .5 billion this quarter, was right in front of the Refinitiv Estimate of $27.1 billion.
But the company also revealed plans for a $40 billion share buyback that sent shares soaring more than 20% in Thursday trading.
