Jim Cramer just can't stay mad at Meta Platforms (META) and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Following the company's previous earnings release, Cramer apologized to his audience, saying that his trust in Meta's management team was "ill-advised" and that his bullish hubris was "extraordinary, and I apologize."
But after this week's print, Cramer is back on the Meta bandwagon and praising its leader Mark Zuckerberg effusively.
"It was a transformational call because he used the term 'efficiency' 16 times. It was a joyous conference call from the point of view of shareholders. Sober from the point of view of Zuckerberg," Cramer said.
Though Zuckerberg didn't explicitly say so, Cramer says he got the feeling that Mark is spending less time in the money-losing Reality Labs segment of the company and more time on the bread and butter social media segment.
"He is really really interested in the Meta family. It was a total deemphasis of what he had been emphasizing," Cramer said.
"It was the call that you get from a mature company that's saying 'don't worry, we are going to make the money. We are going to do it through expense , and we'll give you some revenue growth so stick with us'," Cramer said before calling the earnings call "shocking."
Meta's Quarter
The earnings call must have been really good because the company's fourth quarter financial results weren't that stellar.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, posted softer-than-expected fourth quarter earnings of $1.76 per share, well shy of the Street's $2.22 forecast, thanks in part to a $4.2 billion charge linked to last year's massive layoffs and office closures.
Meta edged past analysts' revenue estimates with a $32.17 billion tally -- around 97.2% of which came from advertising sales -- and while that figure is set to fall to between $26 billion and $28.5 billion this quarter, it was just in front of the Refinitiv estimate of $27.1 billion.
But the company also unveiled plans for a $40 billion stock buyback that sent shares soaring more than 20% in trading Thursday.
