Meta Reports Third Quarter 2023 Results

MENLO PARK, Calif., Oct. 25, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2023.

"We had a good quarter for our community and business," said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. "I'm proud of the work our teams have done to advance AI and mixed reality with the launch of Quest 3, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and our AI studio."

Third Quarter 2023 Financial Highlights

Third Quarter 2023 Operational and Other Financial Highlights

• Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 3.14 billion on average for September 2023, an increase of 7% year-over-year.
• Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 3.96 billion as of September 30, 2023, an increase of 7% year-over-year.
• Facebook daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 2.09 billion on average for September 2023, an increase of 5% year-over-year.
• Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 3.05 billion as of September 30, 2023, an increase of 3% year-over-year.
• Ad impressions and price per ad – In the third quarter of 2023, ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 31% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 6% year-over-year.
• Revenue – Revenue was $34.15 billion, an increase of 23% year-over-year, and an increase of 21% year-over-year on a constant currency basis.
• Costs and expenses – Total costs and expenses were $20.40 billion, a decrease of 7% year-over-year.
• Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $6.76 billion for the third quarter of 2023.
• Share repurchases – We repurchased $3.70 billion of our Class A common stock in the third quarter of 2023. As of September 30, 2023, we had $37.22 billion available and authorized for repurchases.
• Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities – Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $61.12 billion as of September 30, 2023. Free cash flow was $13.64 billion in the third quarter of 2023.
• Long-term debt – Long-term debt was $18.38 billion as of September 30, 2023.
• Headcount – Headcount was 66,185 as of September 30, 2023, a decrease of 24% year-over-year. A substantial majority of the employees impacted by the layoffs are no longer included in our reported headcount as of September 30, 2023.

Restructuring

Beginning in 2022, we initiated several measures to pursue greater efficiency and to realign our business and strategic priorities. As of September 30, 2023, we have substantially completed planned employee layoffs while continuing to assess facilities consolidation and data center restructuring initiatives.

A summary of our restructuring charges, including subsequent adjustments, for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2023 by major activity type is as follows (in millions):

During the three and nine months ended September 30, 2023, we recorded total restructuring charges of $305 million and $1.94 billion under our FoA segment, respectively, and $75 million and $360 million under our RL segment, respectively.

CFO Outlook Commentary

We expect fourth quarter 2023 total revenue to be in the range of $36.5-40 billion. Our guidance assumes a foreign currency tailwind of approximately 2% to year-over-year total revenue growth in the fourth quarter, based on current exchange rates.

We anticipate that our full-year 2023 total expenses will be in the range of $87-89 billion, lowered from our prior range of $88-91 billion. This outlook includes approximately $3.5 billion of restructuring costs related to facilities consolidation charges and severance and other personnel costs. We expect Reality Labs operating losses to increase year-over-year in 2023.

We are also sharing a preliminary outlook for 2024 expenses, capital expenditures and our tax rate. We expect full-year 2024 total expenses to be in the range of $94-99 billion. We continue to expect a few factors to be drivers of total expense growth in 2024:

• First, we expect higher infrastructure-related costs next year. Given our increased capital investments in recent years, we expect depreciation expenses in 2024 to increase by a larger amount than in 2023. We also expect to incur higher operating costs from running a larger infrastructure footprint.
• Second, we anticipate growth in payroll expenses as we work down our current hiring underrun and add incremental talent to support priority areas in 2024, which we expect will continue to shift our workforce composition toward higher-cost technical roles.
• Finally, for Reality Labs, we expect operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.

We expect 2023 capital expenditures to be in the range of $27-29 billion, updated from our prior estimate of $27-30 billion.

We anticipate our full-year 2024 capital expenditures will be in the range of $30-35 billion, with growth driven by investments in servers, including both non-artificial intelligence (AI) and AI hardware, and data centers as we ramp up construction on sites with the new data center architecture we announced late last year.

Absent any changes to U.S. tax law, we expect our fourth quarter 2023 and full-year 2024 tax rates to be similar to the third quarter of 2023.

Please note that our outlook for 2024 expenses, capital expenditures and tax rate are preliminary estimates. In the future, we expect to provide our initial forward year expense, capital expenditures and tax rate outlooks on the fourth quarter call.

In addition, we continue to monitor the active regulatory landscape, including the increasing legal and regulatory headwinds in the EU and the U.S. that could significantly impact our business and our financial results. Of note, the Federal Trade Commission is seeking to substantially modify our existing consent order and impose additional restrictions on our ability to operate. We are contesting this matter, but if we are unsuccessful it would have an adverse impact on our business.

Webcast and Conference Call Information

Meta will host a conference call to discuss the results at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET today. The live webcast of Meta's earnings conference call can be accessed at investor.fb.com, along with the earnings press release, financial tables, and slide presentation. Meta uses the investor.fb.com and about.fb.com/news/ websites as well as Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Page (facebook.com/zuck), Instagram account (instagram.com/zuck) and Threads profile (threads.net/zuck) as means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD.

Following the call, a replay will be available at the same website. A telephonic replay will be available for one week following the conference call at +1 (800) 633-8284 or +1 (402) 977-9140, conference ID 22028137.

Transcripts of conference calls with publishing equity research analysts held today will also be posted to the investor.fb.com website.

About Meta

Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.

Contacts

Investors:
Kenneth Dorell
investor@meta.com / investor.fb.com

Press:
Ryan Moore
press@meta.com / about.fb.com/news/

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding our future business plans and expectations. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual results due to a variety of factors including: the impact of macroeconomic conditions on our business and financial results, including as a result of geopolitical events; our ability to retain or increase users and engagement levels; our reliance on advertising revenue; our dependency on data signals and mobile operating systems, networks, and standards that we do not control; changes to the content or application of third-party policies that impact our advertising practices; risks associated with new products and changes to existing products as well as other new business initiatives, including our metaverse efforts; our emphasis on community growth and engagement and the user experience over short-term financial results; maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation; our ongoing privacy, safety, security, and content review efforts; competition; risks associated with government actions that could restrict access to our products or impair our ability to sell advertising in certain countries; litigation and government inquiries; privacy, legislative, and regulatory concerns or developments; risks associated with acquisitions; security breaches; and our ability to manage our scale and geographically-dispersed operations. These and other potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted are more fully detailed under the caption "Risk Factors" in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on July 27, 2023, which is available on our Investor Relations website at investor.fb.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2023. In addition, please note that the date of this press release is October 25, 2023, and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.

For a discussion of limitations in the measurement of certain of our community metrics, see the section entitled "Limitations of Key Metrics and Other Data" in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

To supplement our condensed consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP), we use the following non-GAAP financial measures: revenue excluding foreign exchange effect, advertising revenue excluding foreign exchange effect, and free cash flow. The presentation of these financial measures is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. Investors are cautioned that there are material limitations associated with the use of non-GAAP financial measures as an analytical tool. In addition, these measures may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies, limiting their usefulness for comparison purposes. We compensate for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the GAAP amounts excluded from these non-GAAP financial measures.

We believe these non-GAAP financial measures provide investors with useful supplemental information about the financial performance of our business, enable comparison of financial results between periods where certain items may vary independent of business performance, and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in operating our business.

We exclude the following items from our non-GAAP financial measures:

Foreign exchange effect on revenue. We translated revenue for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2023 using the prior year's monthly exchange rates for our settlement or billing currencies other than the U.S. dollar, which we believe is a useful metric that facilitates comparison to our historical performance.

Purchases of property and equipment; Principal payments on finance leases. We subtract both purchases of property and equipment, net of proceeds and principal payments on finance leases in our calculation of free cash flow because we believe that these two items collectively represent the amount of property and equipment we need to procure to support our business, regardless of whether we procure such property or equipment with a finance lease. We believe that this methodology can provide useful supplemental information to help investors better understand underlying trends in our business. Free cash flow is not intended to represent our residual cash flow available for discretionary expenditures.

For more information on our non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures, please see the "Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Results" table in this press release.

Segment Results

We report our financial results for our two reportable segments: Family of Apps (FoA) and Reality Labs (RL). FoA includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other services. RL includes augmented and virtual reality related consumer hardware, software, and content.

The following table presents our segment information of revenue and income (loss) from operations:

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SOURCE Meta