This is despite the fact that its results weren't that great, far from it. The expectations were very low and Meta's performance is less mediocre than expected. Quarterly sales are down, for the third consecutive time, by 4% in the last quarter.

The return to good graces can therefore be explained by other factors than financial results.

Mark Zuckerberg has declared that 2023 will be "the year of efficiency" and claims that the use of artificial intelligence is finally giving conclusive results regarding the transformation of the company. It must be said that the new focus towards the Metaverse had been rather badly understood by the shareholders so far, causing them to flee to other assets offering a more concrete visibility.

The founder of Facebook understood that he would have to regain the confidence of his shareholders to move forward. The share price fell by more than 75% between September 2021 and November 2022. The $40 billion share buyback announced yesterday seems to come at the right time.

As for users, there are more than 2 billion of them using the group's platforms - Meta (ex Facebook), Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram - up by 70 million compared to last year. Encouraging figures when we see the radical breakthrough of Chinese competitor TikTok.

However, not everything is rosy from one day to the next. The group's profitability will continue to be impacted by the heavy investments required for the transformation to the Metaverse model. An accounting charge of $4.2 billion has been made in the last three months and a new one of $1 billion should be made in the current quarter...