San Francisco, Jul 29 (IANS): Facebook stocks fell nearly 5 per cent after the company declared that it is expecting a significant growth slowdown in the rest of the year, after posting strong results for the June quarter.

The social network, which reported $29.08 billion in revenue for the second quarter with daily active users (DAUs) at 1.91 billion, said that it expects slower growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2021.

"We expect year-over-year total revenue growth rates to decelerate significantly on a sequential basis as we lap periods of increasingly strong growth," the company said in a statement late on Wednesday.

"When viewing growth on a two-year basis to exclude the impacts from lapping the Covid-19 recovery, we expect year-over-two-year total revenue growth to decelerate modestly in the second half of 2021 compared to the second quarter growth rate," Facebook added.

The company now has 2.9 billion monthly active users (MAUs) globally and average revenue per user stands at $10.12.

"We had a strong quarter as we continue to help businesses grow and people stay connected," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.

"I'm excited to see our major initiatives around creators and community, commerce, and building the next computing platform coming together to start to bring the vision of the metaverse to life," he added.

The metaverse is a collective virtual shared space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the Internet.

Facebook said that advertising revenue growth in the second quarter of 2021 was driven by a 47 per cent year-over-year increase in the average price per ad and a 6 per cent increase in the number of ads delivered.

"Similar to the second quarter, we expect that advertising revenue growth will be driven primarily by year-over-year advertising price increases during the rest of 2021," the company said.

The company now employs 63,404 people, an increase of 21 per cent (YoY).