The Meta Platforms share price has leapt by almost 15% in after hours trading in a reversal of the fate that has befallen its big tech peers in recent weeks after it too reported a slowdown in sales growth.

Last week Netflix’s valuation plunged by over 35% after it revealed its first quarter of negative subscriber growth in a decade despite 10% revenue growth. Earlier this week Google-parent Alphabet saw its valuation drop by 3.5% to take losses for the year-to-date to 21% after it also reported slowing revenue growth.

Snap, the group behind the social media Snapchat, has seen a 25% decline in its share price over the past month and issued a conservative growth outlook last week while posting a larger loss than expected for the first quarter.

In contrast, Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp, yesterday published first quarter results that contained its slowest quarterly sales growth in a decade. But its share price has soared.

The difference in how capital markets have reacted to Meta’s results boils down to the company exceeding analysts’ expectations despite the slowdown. The company’s user numbers and activity levels beat forecasts, as did its profits.

Meta’s revenues for the quarter covering the three months to the end of March were up 7%, which fell just short of analysts’ expectations but net income falling by 21% to $7.47 billion was better than anticipated. Overall user numbers growing despite stiff competition from Chinese-owned Tik-Tok for the attention younger demographics was also seen as a strong positive.  Active daily user numbers across Meta’s apps reached 2.87 billion as of the end of March, representing 6% growth over the year earlier. Facebook’s active daily user numbers grew 4% to 1.96 billion.

Meta Platforms’ chief executive Mark Zuckerberg commented on the company’s results and performance over the quarter with:

“We made progress this quarter across a number of key company priorities and we remain confident in the long-term opportunities and growth that our product roadmap will unlock. More people use our services today than ever before, and I’m proud of how our products are serving people around the world.”

Last year the company changed its name from Facebook to Meta Platforms to reflect its planned future as a key player in the still nascent “metaverse” space. The term metaverse refers to digital worlds users interact with and each other via virtual reality headsets.

Digital advertising revenues have generally come under pressure in recent months due to a combination of inflation and supply chain issues hitting advertisers as well as changes to privacy rules on Apple devices making it more difficult for ads to follow users across applications they are using. However, the controversy and talking points caused by the war in Ukraine may have helped offset some of that impact for Facebook by boosting user activity.

Pinterest, another social media company, also bucked the trend and has seen its share price gain 10.4% in after hours trading after revealing advertising revenues grew by 18% to beat expectations.