Facebook's Chinese Rival Internally Shares Its Financial Reports; Losses Mount In Its Bid For Growth - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd saw its operating losses more than triple last year to above $7 billion as it spent heavily to continue its torrid growth, the Wall Street Journal reports citing financial info shared with employees.
ByteDance also produced an operating profit in the first quarter of 2022, the report showed.
ByteDance has closely guarded its finances and does not publicly disclose results.
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The report shared internally in August covered the entire years for 2020 and 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.
The report disclosed a company rapidly increasing its revenues, accumulating lots of cash and other investments, but with net results impacted by tens of billions of dollars in unrealized market losses on convertible securities.
ByteDance's net loss widened by more than 87% Y/Y to $(84.9) billion in 2021, the report noted.
ByteDance's revenue continued to expand, up nearly 80% Y/Y to $61.7 billion in 2021. The cost of sales came in at $27.4 billion for 2021, up 79% Y/Y as it chased growth.
ByteDance made substantial acquisitions in the video gaming space and sped up hiring and research into advanced chips supporting artificial intelligence and servers.
The operating losses in 2021 totaled $(7.15) billion, up from $(2.14) billion in 2020.
Revenue reached nearly $18.3 billion for Q1 2022, up almost 54% Y/Y. ByteDance net loss for the period was $(4.7) billion, down nearly 84% Y/Y.
ByteDance held $42.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of March, up from $34.1 billion at the end of 2021.
In August, ByteDance shared plans to slash the price of its stock options to talented employees and attract good hires following the 2021 tech meltdown and China's domestic crackdown.
In September, ByteDance disclosed plans to spend up to $3 billion to repurchase shares at a valuation of $300 billion.
ByteDance deferred its initial public offering plans indefinitely.
Meta Platforms, Inc META owned Facebook shuttered its Bulletin subscription service, ending its attempt to compete with Substack.
Meta chose to refocus resources from Bulletin to work on its discovery algorithm, a key point of interest for the company as it attempts to keep up with TikTok.
Price Action: META shares traded lower by 2.99% at $134.91 on the last check Friday.

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