Meta’s Happy Days Are Here Again, For Now

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has 34.1 billion reasons to be satisfied with the social network’s third-quarter result, released Wednesday afternoon. That’s how many dollars Meta reported as revenue, near the top end of the company’s guidance, and representing 23% growth over the year-earlier revenue line. That’s a return to the kind of growth rate we saw routinely from Meta before 2022, when a combination of Apple’s restrictions on ad targeting, competition from TikTok and a broader chill in the ad market derailed the company’s growth rate—and sank the stock. This year, Meta’s stock has recovered much of what it lost.

You might say happy days are here again. In the quarter, Meta’s operating profit margin doubled to 40%, also typical of its pre-2022 financial statements, an improvement no doubt assisted by the layoffs of the past 12 months. Growth should continue: Meta projected that revenue will increase as much as 24% in the fourth quarter. Zuckerberg even said the audience shift to Meta’s short-video app, Reels, is no longer a drag on ad revenue, implying that the company’s TikTok competitor is now paying its way. Whoopee. Still, it’s hard for any reporter to ignore the warts. It’s worth noting, for instance, that the dollar’s decline against currencies such as the euro inflated the company’s reported growth rate by 2 percentage points, a contrast to much of the past year or so when the opposite was the case (as tech companies were then happy to point out).