Facebook’s profits topped $9 billion during its most recent financial quarter, clearing investor predictions even as the company faces an onslaught of negative publicity over a major release of whistleblower documents. The company said it’s adding $50 billion to its stock buyback program, helping lift the shares about 2% in extended trading.
Here are the results.
- Earnings: $3.22 vs. $3.19 per share expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
- Revenue: $29.01 billion vs. $29.57 billion expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
- Daily active users (DAUs): 1.93 billion vs. 1.93 billion expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.
- Monthly active users (MAUs): 2.91 billion vs. 2.93 billion expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.
- Average revenue per user (ARPU): $10.00 vs. $10.15 expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.
Facebook’s financial wins came amid intense scrutiny, after a consortium of news organizations published stories on Monday based on documents leaked by the whistleblower Frances Haugen. Haugen testified on Monday in front of British MPs calling for external regulation of Facebook.
The latest documents have revealed the extent to which Facebook knew about the aggressive spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform, that it was reluctant to censor rightwing news organizations for fear of angering the Trump administration, and how it struggled to crack down on human trafficking operations advertised on Instagram.
In a call with investors on Monday, Zuckerberg addressed the leaked documents but not their contents, saying the issues the company is facing “aren’t primarily about social media but relating to “polarization [that] started rising in the US before I was born. My view on what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to create a false picture about our company.”
Zuckerberg defended Facebook, asserting that the company invests “more than any other tech company when adjusted for scale” on safety and security. Facebook spent $5bn on safety and security in 2021 – half of what it said it will spend on the metaverse division and less than 5% of its annual revenue in 2020. He also said that the company has “pioneered the oversight board as a model of self-regulation”, referring to the company’s independent advisory committee, and that it created “a new model for independent academic researchers to safely access data”.
However, Facebook has been targeted with criticism on both those fronts, with the oversight board complaining about the company’s lack of transparency and stating that it holds little power with high-profile researchers having been kicked off the platform in recent years.
Facebook has remained an economic juggernaut in recent years despite growing regulatory headwinds and public criticism, including revelations from Haugen and another unnamed whistleblower outlining the company’s cutthroat internal workings that prioritize profit over potential safety concerns.
In the earnings call Monday, Zuckerberg also referenced Facebook’s ongoing issue with teens leaving the platform in droves. Leaked documents have further shown the extent to which the company has struggled to retain younger users. One graphic included in the documents released by Haugen recently showed “time spent” for US teenagers on Facebook was down 16% year-over-year and that the age group was spending 5% less time on the social network.
Zuckerberg said Facebook is “retooling” to make “serving young adults” the company’s “Northstar” even if that means “the rest of our community will grow more slowly than [it] otherwise would”. He added that TikTok, which Facebook has attempted to emulate with its Reels feature on Instagram, has been “one of the most effective competitors we have ever seen”. These efforts come despite internal Facebook reports revealing how toxic the platform can be for teens, and young women in particular.
