What most people don't realize is that revenue in Europe is down not because spending is down, but because dollar is stronger. They don't explain this here, but they did in Tesla earnings. Expect multinational companies to have a lower European business this quarter.

>They don't explain this here, but they did in Tesla earnings

It's in the first bullet point on page 2:

Revenue was $27.71 billion, a decrease of 4% year-over-year, and an increase of 2% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant with the third quarter of 2021, revenue would have been $1.79 billion higher.

EDIT: who thinks there would still be explanatory wording added here if forex rates had moved the other way and revenues had gone up ... ?

The real story is how much expenses rose. As a percentage of revenue, expenses went from 70% last quarter, to 80% this quarter. Even if their revenue was flat (it wasn't), that alone would represent a third of their net income disappearing.

I wonder how much of this is the "spite spending" effect. We've barely had 6 months of normalcy. People are sitting on some savings. Many haven't left the house or traveled freely for 2 years. Maybe that's why they're okay spending more than they usually would - just a "f*ck it" after 2 years of isolation.

Certainly was the case for me. I certainly overpaid for a lot of things recently. But we had our big festival here this week and now I'm tapped out. Next year will be a year of sobriety - at least for me.

I think for every spite spender there is at least one other person who is habitually cautious now. I have found it harder to get some people to go out and do things.

Happening more and more with me. Food prices are legitimately too high. I could justify it earlier in my head because I'd been saving for two years. But now...I'm tapped out.

Revenue is flat in the US - yet dollars are down ~8% - so adjusted for inflation - revenue is down considerably.

Don't they report earnings in constant dollars?

Not sure what "constant dollars" are, but I did Board Reporting for a Fortune 25 company and we used a 3 month average to limit the impact of sudden fluctuations.

No.

That's not how anyone reports on this; you don't deflate your revenues for changes in the value of money.

Apart from $/€ being down, could this also have something to do with the GDPR starting to get enforced, biting into Facebook's ability to make targeted advertisements? In the past 6 months or so I've noticed cookie permission popups mostly no longer have all their tracking options enabled by default.

number of ads shown up 17%, price per ad down 18%. Seems to me that advertising is being cut and meta is making up for it by showing more ads per user per time.

It was a bad quarter, but the real kicker is the cautious guidance Meta issued for the current quarter. They signaled to wall street that their problems are only getting worse.