Facebook's Chinese Rival Internally Shares Its Financial Reports; Losses Mount In Its Bid For Growth

• 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. 
• Also Read: TikTok Eyes Live Shopping in US While Taking Care Of National Security Concerns
• 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 (NASDAQ: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.