LogInDespite the significant losses, the company believes that the Reality Labs division deserves ongoing and potentially increased investment and says that it remains its top priority.
Meta has released its final quarterly and full-year financial results for the fiscal year 2022. While the company's revenue exceeded analyst expectations, it has not fully recovered from the challenges of the past year. A major problem for Meta is the financial performance of its Reality Labs division, which has been incurring significant losses.
The company's metaverse-focused Reality Labs division recorded losses of $4.28 billion in the final quarter of 2022. This marks a new low for the struggling division, which has been repeatedly positioned as a key part of Meta's future. Over the course of the entire year, Reality Labs lost a total of $13.72 billion.
While Meta as a whole generated $32.1 billion in revenue across all departments and apps, the revenue generated by Reality Labs was only $727 million in the final months of 2022, which is a decrease of 17% compared to the same period in 2021.
Last year, the Facebook owner cut over 11,000 jobs as a cost-cutting measure made in response to the "macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss."
As reported by Decrypt, during a quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the upcoming fiscal year as a "year of efficiency," emphasizing that the company would continue to operate with minimal resources even after the layoffs. One example of cost-cutting measures that Zuckerberg mentioned is that Meta is "going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren’t performing."
He, however, also repeatedly emphasized that Reality Labs was not facing cuts, but instead deserved ongoing and potentially increased investment.
"Our priorities haven’t changed," he said. "The two major technological waves driving our roadmap are AI today, and, over the longer term, the metaverse."
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