“Good faith criticism helps us get better, but my view is that we are seeing a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company,” Zuckerberg said. “The reality is that we have an open culture that encourages discussion and research on our work so we can make progress on many complex issues that are not specific to just us.”
But despite all the bad headlines, the company reminded investors on Monday that it continues to be a money-making machine.
Facebook reported $29 billion in revenue for the three months ended in September, up 33% from the same period a year earlier. The company posted nearly $9.2 billion in profit, up 17% from the year prior. The number of people using Facebook’s family of apps grew 12% year-over-year, to nearly 3.6 billion during the quarter.
Facebook is no stranger to PR crises. And in most cases, Facebook’s business has continued to chug along at a healthy clip despite outcry from regulators and the public.
On Monday, Facebook warned that the iOS 14 changes could create “continued headwinds” in the fourth quarter of 2021.
“We’ve been open about the fact that there are headwinds coming and we experienced that in Q3. The biggest is the impact of iOS 14 changes,” COO Sheryl Sandberg said on the company’s earnings call Monday. “As a result, we’ve encountered two challenges: one is that the accuracy of our ad targeting decreased, which increased the cost of driving outcomes for our advertisers, and the other is that measuring those outcomes became more difficult.”
While much of the world spent the day focused on Facebook’s real-world harms, the company hinted to investors in the report that it wants them looking forward, not backward. Starting in the fourth quarter, the company plans to break out Facebook Reality Labs — its division dedicated to augmented and virtual reality services — as a separate reporting segment from its family of apps, which includes Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook’s namesake social network.
CFO Dave Wehner said Facebook is investing so heavily in this newer division that it will reduce “our overall operating profit in 2021 by approximately $10 billion.”
In a statement with the results, Facebook CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg also focused on what’s next: “I’m excited about our roadmap, especially around creators, commerce, and helping to build the metaverse.”
Source : Nbcnewyork