Facebook appears to have stopped losing users, despite its owner reporting the slowest revenue growth in a decade.
The number of daily active Facebook users rose to 1.96 billion in the first three months of the year, parent company Meta reported on Wednesday.
That was a turnaround from last year, when the social network first reported a slowdown in user growth.
The decline wiped billions from the company’s market value.
The company’s share price has fallen by almost half since executives announced the decline in February.
But shares rose 13% in after-hours trading on Wednesday on the recovery.
Meta — which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp — was still reporting its slowest revenue growth in at least a decade.
Revenue for the first three months of the year increased just 7% compared to 2021 to reach $27.9 billion.
Analysts say companies are pulling back advertising as they grapple with rising costs and economic uncertainty, fueled in part by the war in Ukraine.
And while Google and Facebook have long been the go-to places for online advertising dollars, they’re facing greater competition as newer sites like TikTok attract users and online shopping giant Amazon gets into the business.
Google owner Alphabet said earlier this week that ad revenue rose 22% in the first three months of the year, slower than analysts expected, while the smaller Snap also warned of trouble.
Meta is also struggling with new privacy rules from Apple that make it harder to target ads. The company said the changes could cost it $10 billion in lost sales this year.
Mr. Zuckerberg has said the company will invest heavily in virtual reality — known as the Metaverse — for its next phase of growth. But that costs it dearly for the time being.
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