Meta Reports Higher Quarterly Revenue Amid “Year of Efficiency”

Meta reported total revenue of $32 billion, an increase of 11 percent year-over-year and at the top-end of the company’s previous guidance for the three months ended June 30.

Net income reached $7.8 billion, up 16 percent from $6.7 billion a year ago. Monthly active users on Facebook reached 3.03 billion as of June 30, 2023, an increase of 3 percent year-over-year.

Total monthly active users across all of Meta’s apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, reached 3.88 billion, up six percent from a year ago.

In March, Meta announced that it would lay off an additional 10,000 employees, after previously cutting 11,000 jobs in November. The March layoffs led to a $523 million hit in Q1, with total costs expected to reach $1 billion by the end of the year. On Wednesday, Meta said it had “substantially completed” planned layoffs but continued to assess “facilities consolidation and data center restructuring initiatives.” The company restructuring charges of $705 million for the three months ended June 30. 

As of June 30, total headcount was 71,469, a decrease of 14 percent year-over-year, but about half of employees impacted by the 2023 layoffs are included in the headcount. 

In April, Meta shut down original programming on Facebook Watch  which included shows such as Red Table Talk, a talk show co-hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris. 

These cuts came as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s proclaimed “year of efficiency,” which the executive first outlined in February 2023 and then reiterated as part of the layoffs in March. 

“We should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years. Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation,” Zuckerberg said in March. 

However, the company has continued to release new offerings, including Threads, its Twitter competitor, in early July. The app is connected to users’ Instagram accounts and allows the user to make text-based posts of up to 500 characters, in addition to photos and video. Threads has not yet launched in countries in the European Union amid strict data protection laws. Meta also continues to see success with Reels, its TikTok competitor which is hosted on Instagram.

“We had a good quarter. We continue to see strong engagement across our apps and we have the most exciting roadmap I’ve seen in a while with Llama 2, Threads, Reels, new AI products in the pipeline, and the launch of Quest 3 this fall,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO.

More to come.