Facebook Q3 Results: Mark Zuckerberg Responds To Massive Document Dump
“Good faith reviews help us improve, but my point is that we are seeing a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked material to paint a false image of our business,” Zuckerberg said. “The reality is that we have an open culture that encourages discussion and research into our work so that we can move forward on many complex issues that are not specific to us.”
But despite all the headlines, the company reminded investors on Monday that it continues to be a money-making machine.
Facebook reported revenue of $ 29 billion for the three months ended September, up 35% from the same period a year earlier. The company made nearly $ 9.2 billion in profit, up 17% from the previous year. The number of people using the Facebook family of apps grew 12% year-over-year to nearly 3.6 billion in the quarter.
Facebook is no stranger to public relations crises. And in most cases, Facebook’s business has continued to grow at a steady pace despite outcry from regulators and the public.
On Monday, Facebook warned that changes to iOS 14 could create “continuing headwinds” in the fourth quarter of 2021.
“We were open to the fact that there were headwinds ahead and we experienced it in the third quarter. The most important is the impact of the changes in iOS 14,” said the director of operating Sheryl Sandberg during the company’s earnings call on Monday. “As a result, we encountered two challenges: one is that the accuracy of our ad targeting has decreased, which has increased the cost of results for our advertisers, and the other is that the measurement of those results has become more hard. ”
While much of the world has spent the day focusing on Facebook’s real-world misdeeds, the company hinted to investors in the report that it wanted them to look to the future, not to the future. the back. Starting in the fourth quarter, the company plans to make Facebook Reality Labs – its division dedicated to augmented and virtual reality services – a separate reporting segment of its family of apps, which includes Instagram, WhatsApp and the namesake social network of Facebook.
CFO Dave Wehner said Facebook is investing so much in this new division that it will reduce “our overall operating profit in 2021 by about $ 10 billion.”
In a statement with the results, Zuckerberg also focused on the sequel: “I’m excited about our roadmap, especially around creators, commerce, and helping to build the Metaverse.”
During the earnings call, Wall Street analysts asked many more questions about new Facebook initiatives and products like the metaverse and Instagram reels than Monday’s media coverage, a reminder investors often prioritize. the growth potential of the business rather than its potential for harm. Evercore ISI asked Zuckerberg to assess the company’s progress in creating artificial intelligence that can identify problematic content.
Zuckerberg pointed to the company’s quarterly transparency reports, which identify “what percentage of the content we act on is our AI … He said that” in most of these categories … over 90% of the content we act on , we identify largely through the AI system “. However, he noted that the success of his systems can vary by category.
“Some categories, like hate speech, have been more difficult,” he said, because “we operate in about 150 languages around the world… there are a lot of cultural nuances in there”.
Zuckerberg also tried to rally his staff.
“I know there are a lot of scrutiny of our efforts, and I guess I just want to tell the team and the people who work there that I’m really proud of the progress they are making,” a- he declared.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Facebook’s quarterly sales growth percentage.