By Facebook parent company Meta has seen a 24% decline in its headcount after announcing job cuts earlier this year.
This emerged when the social media company announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2023.
In March, Meta announced a second round of job cuts, reducing its workforce by 10 000 employees. This, after in November, the company said it was laying off 11 000 employees, about 13% of its workforce.
In its Q3 results, Meta says its headcount was at 66 185 as of 30 September, a decrease of 24% year-over-year.
“A substantial majority of the employees impacted by the layoffs are no longer included in our reported headcount as of 30 September 2023,” the firm says.
“During the three and nine months ended 30 September 2023, we recorded total restructuring charges of $305 million and $1.94 billion under our FoA [Family of Apps] segment, respectively, and $75 million and $360 million under our RL [Reality Labs] segment, respectively,” it adds.
The Meta headcount reduction comes as other technology companies cull their workforces, with Microsoft, Google and Amazon reducing their employees since the beginning of the year.
Meanwhile, Meta says the daily active people across its platforms reached 3.14 billion on average for September 2023, an increase of 7% year-over-year.
Facebook daily active users stood at 2.09 billion on average for the period, an increase of 5% year-over-year. Facebook monthly active users totalled 3.05 billion, an increase of 3% year-over-year.
In the third quarter of 2023, ad impressions delivered across the firm’s apps increased by 31% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 6% year-over-year.
Revenue was $34.15 billion, an increase of 23% year-over-year, and an increase of 21% year-over-year on a constant currency basis.
Total costs and expenses were $20.40 billion, a decrease of 7% year-over-year.
Capital expenditure, including principal payments on finance leases, was $6.76 billion for the third quarter of 2023.
“We had a good quarter for our community and business,” says Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. “I’m proud of the work our teams have done to advance AI [artificial intelligence] and mixed reality with the launch of Quest 3, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and our AI studio.”
Susan Li, Meta chief financial officer, says the firm expects fourth quarter 2023 total revenue to be in the range of $36.5 billion to $40 billion.
“Our guidance assumes a foreign currency tailwind of approximately 2% to year-over-year total revenue growth in the fourth quarter, based on current exchange rates.
“We anticipate that our full-year 2023 total expenses will be in the range of $87 billion to $89 billion, lowered from our prior range of $88 billion to $91 billion. This outlook includes approximately $3.5 billion of restructuring costs related to facilities consolidation charges and severance and other personnel costs. We expect Reality Labs’ operating losses to increase year-over-year in 2023.”
