Facebook Inc on Tuesday beat profit estimates but missed targets for growing monthly users and reported its slowest revenue growth in about six years in a quarter some investors feared would be hit harder by defections from the social media site. Facebook is keeping costs in check better than some investors anticipated but is facing challenges growing users, causing shares to swing in both directions after the third-quarter results.
Shares of Facebook were down 3 percent to $141.50 after seesawing between positive and negative territory after the bell, when shares had closed up 2.9 percent at $146.22. Shares fell again after Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, on a conference call with analysts, repeated the company's warning that shifting user behavior would leave revenue and cost growth out of sync for "some time."
He also noted costs would continue to rise to deal with safety and security issues.
"The upcoming elections will be a real test of the protections we've put in place," Zuckerberg said. "With a community of more than 2 billion people, we will see all the good and bad that humanity can do. And we will never be perfect."
Big winners on Wall Street in recent years, internet giants including Facebook, Amazon.com Inc and Google parent Alphabet Inc have suffered a battering over the last month.
Slowing growth after years of strong results has been a top concern, and Facebook's weak results underscored some of those fears.
Still, the company had warned about sagging profit and revenue growth. Facebook's spending has ballooned as it tries to fortify itself against fraudsters and hackers, and as it invests in more engaging content such as video.
Total expenses in the third quarter surged to $7.95 billion, up 53 percent compared with a year ago. But operating margin fell only 2 percentage points from last quarter, to 42 percent.
Facebook's revenue was in line with expectations, when accounting for what the company said were unfavorable foreign exchange rates.
Overall third-quarter revenue was $13.73 billion, up 33 percent from the same period last year and below the $13.78 billion average analyst estimate in Refinitiv data.
Quarterly profit of $5.14 billion, or $1.76 per share, was up 9 percent from the same period last year and above the average per-share estimate of $1.48.
As Facebook user growth has tapered off, its ad sales had continued to surge as it found ways to better target ads to draw clicks and views. Emerging businesses Instagram and WhatsApp are seen as hopes for picking up the slack from flattening usage of the main Facebook app.
Facebook lost 1 million monthly users in Europe for the second straight quarter. It gained 1 million monthly users in the United States after holding steady last quarter.
The social network's reputation has suffered from a data breach affecting 29 million users in September and a privacy scandal involving a British political consulting firm in March.
It also has been rocked by domestic and international information warfare on its services, including WhatsApp and Instagram, and a wave of executive departures.
Still, the company has managed to gain some users. The company said 2.6 billion users interact with at least one of its apps each month, up from 2.5 billion when it released the figure for the first time last quarter to emphasize that its potential audience for advertisers is unrivaled in size.
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