Meta

Last modified by Asif Farooqui on 2022/12/22 17:35

Summary

  • Meta Platforms, Inc., develops and maintain social media applications.
  • Meta Platforms owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp.
  • Meta Platforms announced Meta Quest Pro in October 2022

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Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) develops and maintain social media applications. The company was founded by Mark Elliot Zuckerberg in 2004, with the launch of Facebook 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.

Family of Apps

Facebook

Facebook helps give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. It's a place for people to share life's moments and discuss what's happening, nurture and build relationships, discover and connect to interests, and create economic opportunity. They can do this through News Feed, Stories, Groups, Watch, Marketplace, Reels, Dating, and more.

Instagram

Instagram brings people closer to the people and things they love. Instagram Feed, Stories, Reels, Video, Live, Shops, and messaging are places where people and creators can express themselves and push culture forward through photos, video, and private messaging, and connect with and shop from their favorite businesses.

Messenger

Messenger is a simple yet powerful messaging application for people to connect with friends, family, groups, and businesses across platforms and devices through chat, audio and video calls, and Rooms.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a simple, reliable, and secure messaging application that is used by people and businesses around the world to communicate and transact in a private way.

Reality Labs

Reality Labs

Reality Labs' augmented and virtual reality products help people feel connected, anytime, anywhere. Meta Quest lets people defy distance with cutting-edge VR hardware, software, and content. Facebook Portal video calling devices help friends and families stay connected and share the moments that matter in meaningful ways.

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Recent Developments

Meta’s Progress in Augmented and Virtual Reality

December 19, 2022; Meta shipped several of them in Meta Quest Pro: Mixed reality is a key part of the journey toward full augmented reality devices, and eye and face tracking are essential pieces of the technology stack needed for AR and VR devices to reach their full potential. Quest Pro also brought important advances in display and optics that will move VR hardware forward for the long term.1

Introducing Meta Reality

Mixed reality is about much more than just displaying a live video feed of your surroundings inside the headset. For it to work properly, the headset needs to understand your room as a 3D space, recognizing the surfaces and objects around you and how they can interact with digital objects. It requires technologies like Spatial Anchors, which allow virtual things to occupy fixed spaces in the physical world, as well as Scene Understanding for reconstructing physical spaces virtually, as well as stereoscopic color  Passthrough, for capturing the physical world and representing it accurately in the headset with a sense of depth for greater comfort. Meta Reality, its system for mixed reality, combines all these technologies and more into a single system for developers to build with.

Eye and Face Tracking

Eye and face tracking have a wealth of possibilities, both today and long into the future. Right now, eye and face tracking are delivering more expressive avatars on Meta Quest Pro, allowing people’s digital selves to more closely match their real-world facial expressions. This is one of many steps The company is taking to create an avatar system that can improve the quality of communication, expression, and connection in virtual spaces — and we’ll have plenty more to share on this in 2023.

Introducing Infinite Display

The visual quality of a VR device depends on a range of technologies that go beyond the typical metrics we’ve used when describing the displays on a computer, TV or phone. Along with display resolution, factors like system resolution, sharpness, contrast and color range each play an important part. So does the optical stack itself, where lenses, coatings and films each make a huge difference. The company recently shared more detail on how each of these come together in Meta’s Infinite Display system for VR optics, the product of years of investment in research and development for VR and AR technologies. That R&D will continue paying off long into the future, and earlier this year the company showcased some of the research prototypes we’ve built to demonstrate these next-generation display technologies.

Meta Quest Pro

October 25, 2022; Meta Platforms announced Meta Quest Pro, the first in its new high-end class of VR headsets. It comes loaded with innovative features like high-resolution sensors that enable full-color mixed reality experiences, next-generation pancake optics, advanced LCD displays that deliver sharp visuals, an all-new, sleek and comfortable design complete with guided Fit Adjustment, and eye tracking and Natural Facial Expressions for enhanced social presence.2

All of this makes Meta Quest Pro the perfect device for collaborating and working much more naturally in VR. And the company plan on working closely with developers over time to build a rich ecosystem of experiences that leverage Meta Quest Pro’s innovative mixed reality and social presence capabilities.

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Financial Highlights

Third Quarter 2022 Results

Oct. 26, 2022; Meta Platforms, Inc. reported financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2022.3

Revenue – Revenue was $27.71 billion, a decrease of 4% year-over-year, and an increase of 2% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant with the third quarter of 2021, revenue would have been $1.79 billion higher.

Costs and expenses – Total costs and expenses were $22.05 billion, an increase of 19% year-over-year. This includes an impairment loss of $413 million for certain operating leases as part of its ongoing work to align its office facilities footprint with its anticipated operating needs.

Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $9.52 billion for the third quarter of 2022.

Share repurchases – The company repurchased $6.55 billion of its Class A common stock in the third quarter of 2022. As of September 30, 2022, the company had $17.78 billion available and authorized for repurchases.

Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities – Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $41.78 billion as of September 30, 2022.

Long-term debt – Long-term debt was $9.92 billion as of September 30, 2022.

Headcount – Headcount was 87,314 as of September 30, 2022, an increase of 28% year-over-year.

Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 2.93 billion on average for September 2022, an increase of 4% year-over-year.

Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 3.71 billion as of September 30, 2022, an increase of 4% year-over-year.

Facebook daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.98 billion on average for September 2022, an increase of 3% year-over-year.

Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.96 billion as of September 30, 2022, an increase of 2% year-over-year.

Ad impressions and price per ad – In the third quarter of 2022, ad impressions delivered across its Family of Apps increased by 17% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 18% year-over-year.

Outlook

The company expect fourth quarter 2022 total revenue to be in the range of $30-32.5 billion. The company's guidance assumes foreign currency will be an approximately 7% headwind to year-over-year total revenue growth in the fourth quarter, based on current exchange rates.

To provide some context on the approach Meta Platforms is taking towards setting its 2023 budget, Meta Platforms is making significant changes across the board to operate more efficiently. Meta Platforms is holding some teams flat in terms of headcount, shrinking others and investing headcount growth only in its highest priorities. As a result, the company expect headcount at the end of 2023 will be approximately in-line with third quarter 2022 levels.

Meta Platforms has increased scrutiny on all areas of operating expenses. However, these moves follow a substantial investment cycle so they will take time to play out in terms of its overall expense trajectory. Some steps, like the ongoing rationalization of its office footprint, will lead to incremental costs in the near term. This should set it up well for future years, when the company expect to return to higher rates of revenue growth.

The company expect 2022 total expenses to be in the range of $85-87 billion, updated from its prior outlook of $85-88 billion. This includes an estimated $900 million in additional charges related to consolidating its office facilities footprint that the company expect to record in the fourth quarter of 2022. The company anticipate its full-year 2023 total expenses will be in the range of $96-101 billion. This includes an estimated $2 billion in charges related to consolidating its office facilities footprint.

The company expect the slight majority of its 2023 expense dollar growth to be driven by operating expenses, with the remaining growth coming from cost of revenue. The company expect the percentage growth rate of 2023 operating expenses to decelerate meaningfully as the company curtail non-headcount related expense growth and keep 2023 headcount roughly flat with current levels. Conversely, its growth in cost of revenue is expected to accelerate, driven by infrastructure-related expenses and, to a lesser extent, Reality Labs hardware costs driven by the launch of its next generation of its consumer Quest headset later next year.

Reality Labs expenses are included in its total expense guidance. The company do anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year. Beyond 2023, the company expect to pace Reality Labs investments such that the company can achieve its goal of growing overall company operating income in the long run.

The company expect 2022 capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, to be in the range of $32-33 billion, updated from its prior range of $30-34 billion. For 2023, the company expect capital expenditures to be in the range of $34-39 billion, driven by its investments in data centers, servers, and network infrastructure. An increase in AI capacity is driving substantially all of its capital expenditure growth in 2023.

Absent any changes to U.S. tax law, the company expect its fourth quarter 2022 and its full-year 2023 tax rate to be similar to the third quarter 2022 rate.

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Product and Technologies

Meta Platforms is building new ways to help people explore interests and connect with the people.4

DevicesAppsWork products
Meta QuestMeta HorizonWork products overview
Meta PortalFacebookVirtual reality headsets
Ray-Ban StoriesMessengerMeta Horizon Workrooms
 InstagramWorkplace
 WhatsApp 

Company History

Meta Platforms was founded by Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris R. Hughes, Andrew McCollum, and Eduardo P. Saverin on February 4, 2004.

YearMilestone
February 4, 2004Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launch Facebook.
June 1, 2004Facebook moves to Palo Alto, California.
September 20, 2005thefacebook.com officially drops the “the” and becomes Facebook.
April 1, 2006Facebook for Mobile launches.
September 5, 2006Launch of News Feed.
May 24, 2007Facebook Platform launches.
April 6, 2008Facebook Chat launches.
April 9, 2012Instagram acquisition is announced.
May 18, 2012Facebook holds its initial public offering.
February 19, 2014WhatsApp acquisition is announced
March 25, 2014Oculus acquisition is announced.
June 11, 2015Oculus Rift is introduced.
October 10, 2016Workplace is introduced.
November 14, 2016WhatsApp introduces video calling.
January 18, 2018WhatsApp Business App launches.
November 12, 2019Facebook Pay launches.
June 15, 2020WhatsApp launches payments.
July 14, 2021A $1 billion investment in creators is announced.
October 28, 2021Meta, new company brand, is introduced.

References

  1. ^ https://about.fb.com/news/2022/12/metas-progress-in-augmented-and-virtual-reality/
  2. ^ https://about.fb.com/news/2022/10/meta-quest-pro-is-now-available/
  3. ^ https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2022/Meta-Reports-Third-Quarter-2022-Results/default.aspx
  4. ^ https://about.meta.com/technologies/
Tags: USA US:META
Created by Wilton Risenhoover on 2022/12/13 05:13
     
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