Facebook daily active users (DAU) were 1.96 billion, slightly higher than the estimate of 1.95 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv

Facebook rebounded from a drop in users early this year and its parent Meta posted a profit ahead of Wall Street targets, defying low investor expectations with a quarterly report that sent shares up nearly 20%.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said that the company would scale back costs and was investing in artificial intelligence tools to improve recommendations and ads, a sign Meta is buckling down to make money while working on its long-term ambitions to build the metaverse.

Its stock rose 19% in after-hours trade on Wednesday.

Meta’s profit soundly beat Wall Street targets at $2.72 per share, compared with an average analyst estimate of $2.56, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. The earning beats were tempered by Meta recording its slowest revenue growth in a decade.

Facebook daily active users (DAU), a key metric for advertisers, were 1.96 billion, slightly higher than the estimate of 1.95 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Monthly active users came in at 2.94 billion, missing Wall Street estimates by 30 million.

Meta has lost about half of its value since the start of the year, after a dismal February earnings report when Facebook’s daily active users declined for the first time and it forecast a gloomy quarter, blaming ongoing factors including Apple’s privacy changes and increased competition from platforms like ByteDance’s TikTok.

It’s good news that Meta somehow managed to eke out growth in DAU. It needed to show some sort of turnaround from last quarter’s performance, Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Williamson said.

However, growth in monthly active users is slowing quickly. A few quarters ago it could count on developing markets to keep the growth engine going but it’s likely that even these high-growth opportunities are starting to dry up, she said.