Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Results; Initiates Quarterly Dividend

MENLO PARK, Calif., Feb. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2023.

"We had a good quarter as our community and business continue to grow," said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. "We've made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse." 

Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Financial Highlights

Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Operational and Other Financial Highlights

• Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 3.19 billion on average for December 2023, an increase of 8% year-over-year.
• Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 3.98 billion as of December 31, 2023, an increase of 6% year-over-year.
• Facebook daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 2.11 billion on average for December 2023, an increase of 6% year-over-year.
• Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 3.07 billion as of December 31, 2023, an increase of 3% year-over-year.
• Ad impressions and price per ad – In the fourth quarter of 2023, ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 21% year-over-year and the average price per ad increased by 2% year-over-year. For the full year 2023, ad impressions increased by 28% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 9% year-over-year.
• Revenue – Revenue was $40.11 billion and $134.90 billion, an increase of 25% and 16% year-over-year for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant with the same periods of 2022, revenue would have been $816 million and $374 million lower, an increase of 22% and 15% on a constant currency basis for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively.
• Costs and expenses – Total costs and expenses were $23.73 billion and $88.15 billion for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, a decrease of 8% and an increase of 1% year-over-year, respectively. Restructuring charges included in costs and expenses were $1.15 billion and $3.45 billion for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively.
• Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $7.90 billion and $28.10 billion for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively.
• Share repurchases – We repurchased $6.32 billion and $20.03 billion of our Class A common stock in the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively. As of December 31, 2023, we had $30.93 billion available and authorized for repurchases. We also announced a $50 billion increase in our share repurchase authorization today.
• Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities – Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $65.40 billion as of December 31, 2023. Free cash flow was $11.50 billion and $43.01 billion for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively.
• Long-term debt – Long-term debt was $18.39 billion as of December 31, 2023.
• Headcount – Headcount was 67,317 as of December 31, 2023, a decrease of 22% year-over-year.

Meta Initiates Quarterly Dividend

Today, Meta's board of directors declared a cash dividend of $0.50 per share of our outstanding common stock (including both Class A common stock and Class B common stock), payable on March 26, 2024 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on February 22, 2024. We intend to pay a cash dividend on a quarterly basis going forward, subject to market conditions and approval by our board of directors.

Restructuring

Beginning in 2022, we initiated several measures to pursue greater efficiency and to realign our business and strategic priorities. As of December 31, 2023, we have completed the data center initiatives and the employee layoffs, and substantially completed the facilities consolidation initiatives.

A summary of our restructuring charges, including subsequent adjustments, for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2023 by major activity type is as follows (in millions):

During the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2022, we recorded total restructuring charges of $4.20 billion and $4.61 billion, respectively.

CFO Outlook Commentary

We expect first quarter 2024 total revenue to be in the range of $34.5-37 billion. Our guidance assumes foreign currency is neutral to year-over-year total revenue growth, based on current exchange rates.

We expect full-year 2024 total expenses to be in the range of $94-99 billion, unchanged from our prior outlook. We continue to expect a few factors to be drivers of total expense growth in 2024:

• First, we expect higher infrastructure-related costs this 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 further 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 anticipate our full-year 2024 capital expenditures will be in the range of $30-37 billion, a $2 billion increase of the high end of our prior range. We expect growth will be driven by investments in servers, including both AI and non-AI hardware, and data centers as we ramp up construction on sites with our previously announced new data center architecture. Our updated outlook reflects our evolving understanding of our artificial intelligence (AI) capacity demands as we anticipate what we may need for the next generations of foundational research and product development. While we are not providing guidance for years beyond 2024, we expect our ambitious long-term AI research and product development efforts will require growing infrastructure investments beyond this year.

Absent any changes to U.S. tax law, we expect our full-year 2024 tax rate to be in the mid-teens.

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.

This was a pivotal year for our company. We increased our operating discipline, delivered strong execution across our product priorities, and improved advertising performance for the businesses who rely on our services. We will look to build on our progress in each of those areas in 2024 while advancing our ambitious, longer-term efforts in AI and Reality Labs.

Webcast and Conference Call Information

Meta will host a conference call to discuss the results at 1:30 p.m. PT / 4:30 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) 770-2030 or +1 (647) 362-9199, conference ID 8032328.

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
[email protected] / investor.fb.com

Press:
Ryan Moore
[email protected] / 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; our ability to manage our scale and geographically-dispersed operations; and market conditions or other factors affecting the payment of dividends. 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 October 26, 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 Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023. In addition, please note that the date of this press release is February 1, 2024, 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 or annual report 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 months and full year ended December 31, 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, mixed, and virtual reality related consumer hardware, software, and content.

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

SOURCE Meta