Mark wants his employees to know how to make money.
The CEO, who spent most of the past 12 months burning billions of dollars to transform his empire into a metaverse company, slightly reversed course this week and said that he would likely drive sales growth in the future. The comments made to Meta employees during a company-wide meeting came weeks after a round of mass layoffs at the company rattled workers and investors.
Business messaging inWhatsApp and Messenger are likely going to be the next major pillar of our business, according to a reply by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He said that Monetization on those two apps is still in its infancy. The world's most popular messaging app has an estimated $2 billion users in 2020. Meta has spent years toying with ways to slowly integrate advertising through the platform in the future.
The bet the farm investment he is making into metaverse products appears to have been downplayed by the man. Employees were the biggest expense, followed by infrastructure support for its family of ads, according to a report. The segment in overseeing its metaverse ambitions received 20% of the company's spending. According to a report, 40% of Reality Labs budget goes to virtual reality products.
Meta did not reply immediately.
The recent comments suggest that he is starting to take employee and shareholder criticism of the company seriously.
Meta has lost $9.4 billion this year. Despite Meta owning the world's top selling consumer virtual reality headset, Reality Labs made less money during the third quarter. Zuck and his team decided to release a lot of expensive mixed reality headsets rather than tighten their belts. There are more metaverse-related operating losses on the way.
Meta said in a statement to CNBC that it expects Reality Labs' operating losses to grow significantly in the years to come. We expect to pace Reality Labs investments such that we can achieve our goal of growing operating income in the long run.
Some long term bets without certain payoffs are becoming more annoyed by the prospect. The company's stock price fell by more than 70% from January when the company's commitments were reiterated.
Jim Tierney, chief funding officer for U.S. development for AllianceBernstein, told The Financial Times that if any other company had done this, they would have activist investors writing letters. Meta is owned by AllianceBernstein. Mark heard what investors wanted to hear. He has decided.
At least metaverseavatars have legs now. It's sort of.
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