Q&A is a session under a company's earnings conference that institutional and retail investors ask some most-concerned questions to the management. $Meta Platforms (FB.US)$ just released its Q3 earnings with its EPS slightly beating the estimate. On this page, you may discover info that might affect the stock price in the following weeks.
Key Takeaways:
Attitudes: management believes the Apple changes were the largest headwinds. 2021 is an incredibly strong year of revenue growth, but there's sort of uncertainty implied in Q4 and 2022. It is facing tough competition from TikTok and Snapchat.
Goals: the company's headcount is coming in above 20 percent than Q3's. The company also expects deceleration in growth in 2022 and margins to be lower than 2021. The business North Star is that by the end of the decade can help a billion people use the metaverse and support hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce.
Investment: metaverse is not going to be profitable in the near future. The investment includes new platforms, virtual reality product line, and augmented reality product line.
You're talking about the heavy focus on metaverse over the long term, just hoping you could help us recap kind of the 1-year, 3-year, and then 5-year aspirations from a product perspective.
So, for the next, one, three years, I think what you'll see is us putting more of the foundational pieces into place. This is not an investment that is going to be profitable for us anytime in the near future. But, you know, we basically believe that the metaverse is going to be the successor of the mobile internet, that it's going to enable social experiences that are the ultimate expression of what we try to build, which is allowing people to feel really present with the people they care about no matter where they actually are.
So, on the next, I wouldn't focus on the sort of business outcomes there that the products and the infrastructure that we're putting in place. So, there are new platforms, there's hardware components, there's the whole virtual reality product line, there's the augmented reality product line. You know, we're kind of starting to put those pieces in place. The business North Star are we hope that by the end of the decade that we can help a billion people use the metaverse and support hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce. And I think if we can do that, then this will be a good investment over there for the long term.
Just a little more question on Apple (iOS 14) and the ATT changes. On the iOS changes, is it fair to say that that's the majority that accounts for the majority of the headwinds that you saw in Q3 and expect to see in Q4?
When you start at the top of this, you really have to think about what personalized ads are, and we think they're better for people and businesses and they're especially important to small businesses. They also can be done in a very privacy-safe way. We're developing privacy-enhancing technology to minimize the amount of personal information we learn and using more aggregate or anonymous data, while still allowing us to show those relevant personalized ads and measure of effectiveness. The Apple platform changes were the largest factor in terms of Q3 headwinds. It was really the first full-quarter impact, and if it really weren't for that, we would have expected sequential growth Q2 to Q3.
How that might be a driver of permanence versus transient nature of operating expenses and capital expenditures in the years ahead?
On the outlook on expenses in 2022, it's early but we wanted to give an initial outlook of our expected expense range. We've got a lot of priorities in advertising, AI, commerce, privacy. So, when you kind of pull all these things together, we've got a pretty robust spending plan next year. The primary driver is going to be accelerating headcount growth in 2022. So, that's going to be something you'll see headcount coming in above 20 percent that we have this quarter. And we alsoexpect to have higher expenses from office operations and travel once larger parts of the workforce are returning to the office in 2022. We're not providing a specific breakdown at this point for segment expense.
Just on the 2022 expenses, which is about 29 percent to 38 percent growth. Do you have any commentary on revenue growth in '22 to go along with that?
We're not, at this point, providing a specific revenue outlook for 2022. You know, we continue to see opportunities to grow both impressions and price next year, so we're obviously coming off an incredibly strong year of revenue growth in 2021. So, we do expect deceleration in growth in 2022 from the full-year 2021 rate. And there's sort of uncertainty implied in our range for Q4 revenue and I think that holds true for the 2022 outlook as well. Given the expense growth that we outlined, you know, which is implied in the north of 30 percent, we don't expect revenue growth at that level. So, we would expect 2022 margins to be lower than 2021.
Can you maybe just speak to the current trends in engagement at both Facebook and Instagram among millennials and younger audiences?
Our products are widely used by teens but we are facing tough competition from the like of TikTok, particularly, and Snapchat. And we're focused on, obviously, continuing to innovate and roll out products like Reels and attract the younger demographics and retain the younger demographic for our products. And that's why we're continuing to build and invest in those areas.
This article is a script from the Q&A session of Facebook's earnings call on Oct 25. In order to facilitate reading, we have made appropriate cuts. If you want to know more details, you can click here to re-watch the earnings call.

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