Digital giant Meta reported losses in Spain again, even as activity continued to trigger its operations. Facebook Spain, the group’s Spanish subsidiary, posted a red against profits last year, amounting to 4.97 million euros after reporting 2.7 million euros in the prior year, according to accounts filed with the Trade Registry.
Facebook Spain, tasked with managing ad revenue in the Spanish market, benefited from the engineering and marketing support of its European parent company, headquartered in Ireland, and the global group, based in the United States. This support helped the subsidiary nearly double its net turnover in 2022, rising to 65.6 million euros from 33.3 million euros the year before.
According to accounts recently submitted to the Madrid registry, gross ad revenue managed and invoiced by the Madrid-based company increased by 27 percent, reaching around 472 million euros last year, while the costs associated with that advertising activity grew by 20 percent to 406 million euros. The gap between these figures outlines the company’s annual net turnover.
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In 2022, Facebook Spain nearly tripled its personnel expenses, rising from 20.5 million euros to more than 54 million euros. Company records show the workforce expanded significantly, increasing from 85 employees to 286 roles. Yet in the following year the subsidiary reduced its staff in Spain and halted new offers, affecting key local subcontractors such as CCC, which faced about 250 layoffs.
Meta, the parent company that owns WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, announced an ambitious growth plan in Spain last year. The plan includes a large data center in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo), the construction of a new submarine cable, the expansion of offices in Madrid, and other metaverse-related projects linked to the Spanish market, with a goal of hiring around 2,000 employees within five years.
On the other hand, both last year and this year, Meta implemented a broad group-wide employment adjustment that included thousands of departures and many unfilled vacancies across the group, affecting more than 20,000 roles. The adjustments did not meet expectations for the metaverse, and the overarching restructuring prompted injections of about 2.5 million euros from the parent matrix to cover related compensation costs associated with this realignment in the Spanish subsidiary.