CE 100 Index Gains 0.3% as Meta Soars 20% Post-Earnings

Meta dominated the CE 100 Index’s earnings-related news this week, soaring on commentary that users are engaging more often with its app.

The overall index logged a 0.3% gain.

Meta shares jumped 20.5%, helping drive the Enablers pillar 3.1% higher.

As reported this week, the number of daily active people across the company’s family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp — was just under 3 billion in December, up 5% from last year.

Monthly active users, as a metric, was 3.7 billion as of the end of the year, an increase of 4% year over year.

“I said last quarter that I thought our product trends look better than most of the commentary out there suggests,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the call. “And I think that’s even more the case now,” adding, “The number of people daily using Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is the highest it’s ever been.”

The company’s “monetization efficiency” cited by the CEO, has doubled for Facebook in the past six months. Advertisers saw 20% more conversions than in the year before.

CFO Susan Li noted that “other revenue” was $184 million in the fourth quarter, up 19% with “strong business messaging revenue growth from our WhatsApp business platform.”

During the question-and-answer session with analysts, Javier Olivan, Meta COO, said that they are continuing to test Shop Ads and said, “We’re seeing increased performance by helping direct the consumer … to where they’re most likely to purchase. … It’s a small base, but just to give you a sense, we saw triple-digit growth in both revenue and adoption across Q4.”

MongoDB also added to the Enabler segment’s momentum, adding 10.3%.

The rally comes after the news, in the middle of last month, that Patronus AI partnered with MongoDB, a database platform, to bring automated large language models (LLM) evaluation and testing capabilities to enterprise customers. The joint efforts will link Patronus AI and MongoDB’s Atlas Vector Search product.

Businesses using generative AI for internal operations can face problems as the software can often fail or produce unexpected behavior.

But the aforementioned gains were blunted by declines elsewhere.  Peloton dived 26.9%, dragging the Be Well segment down 1.2%.

In its own earnings report,  Peloton noted revenue was down 6% year over year for the quarter, even as subscription revenue rose by 3%.

On a call with analysts, Liz Coddington, the firm’s chief financial officer, noted that the quarter saw the company’s subscription business face headwinds but said business-to-business (B2B) represents a significant market to tap.

“Our Peloton for Business offerings and our corporate wellness space — that’s a great opportunity for us,” Coddington said. “Those deals … do take time … [but] those could be a great accelerant in app subscription growth for us.”

iRobot was also lower, by 12.1%, ensuring that the Live pillar dropped 3.7%.

The deal with Amazon is off. The eCommerce behemoth has called off its $1.7 billion purchase of iRobot. Amazon said that it “has no path to regulatory approval” in the European Union and has scuttled the deal.

In the wake of the news, iRobot — maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner — said it is beginning a restructuring that will result in the loss of 350 jobs, or 31% of its staff. CEO and Chairman Colin Angle will also step down.

And PDD shares moved lower this past week on news that its online marketplace Temu reportedly spent $3 billion in 2023 on online advertising in the United States for its eCommerce marketplace. But as had been noted by analysts the company has captured only 1% of the U.S. eCommerce market as measured last year and they have questioned the company’s ability to convert site visits into sales.

Shares of the company were 12% lower through the week.

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