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  • Good afternoon.

  • My name is Mike, and I will be your conference operator today.

  • At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Facebook Second Quarter 2018 Earnings

  • Call.

  • All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

  • After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session.

  • This call will be recorded.

  • Thank you very much.

  • Ms. Deborah Crawford, Facebook's Vice President of Investor Relations, you may begin.

  • Thank you.

  • Good afternoon and welcome to Facebook second quarter 2018 earnings conference call.

  • Joining me today to discuss our results are Mark Zuckerberg, CEO; Sheryl Sandberg, COO;

  • and Dave Wehner, CFO.

  • Before we get started, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks

  • today will include forward-looking statements.

  • Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking

  • statements.

  • Factors that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in today's

  • press release and in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC.

  • Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of

  • today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information

  • or future events.

  • During this call, we may present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.

  • A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release.

  • The press release and an accompanying investor presentation are available on our website

  • at investor.fb.com.

  • And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mark.

  • Thanks, Deborah, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today.

  • We had another solid quarter.

  • Revenue grew 42% year-over-year to $13.2 billion.

  • And Facebook now has more than 2.2 billion monthly active with almost 1.5 billion actives

  • using it every day.

  • For the first time today, we're also releasing how many people use at least one of our apps,

  • Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger, and that's 2.5 billion people each month.

  • This number better reflects our community for a couple of reasons.

  • First, it refers to individual people rather than active accounts, so it excludes when

  • people have multiple active accounts on a single app.

  • And second, it reflects that many people use more than one of our services.

  • And Dave will explain this in a little more detail later.

  • I want to start by talking about all the investments we've made over the last six months to improve

  • safety, security and privacy across our services.

  • This has been a lot of hard work and it's starting to pay off.

  • We recently launched two important ad transparency tools: one to let anyone see the ads any page

  • is running even if the ads aren't targeted to you; and the other an archive of ads with

  • political or issue content that's starting in the U.S. ready for the midterm election.

  • These ads are now labeled so you can clearly see who's paying for them and, within the

  • archives, you can see the budget associated with each ad, how many people saw it, and

  • search all ads with political or issue content that an advertiser has run for up to seven

  • years.

  • This level of transparency will mean increased accountability and responsibility for advertisers

  • globally.

  • Over the next 18 months, there are important elections beyond the U.S. in Brazil, India,

  • and the EU, and these will all be real tests for Facebook.

  • But I'm confident that we will get this right given our results during last year's French

  • and German elections, the Alabama special election, as well as this month's presidential

  • election in Mexico, where our systems found and removed thousands of fake account pages

  • and groups that violated our policies.

  • Of course, security is not a problem that you ever fully solve.

  • We face sophisticated well-funded adversaries who are constantly evolving.

  • But, during each election, we learn and improve too.

  • We're also making progress in the fight against misinformation.

  • We're getting rid of the financial incentives for spammers to create fake news, much of

  • which is economically motivated.

  • We stopped pages that repeatedly spread false information from buying ads.

  • And we also use AI to prevent fake accounts that generate a lot of the problematic content

  • from ever being created in the first place.

  • Our investments in AI mean that we can now remove more bad content quickly because we

  • don't have to wait until after it's reported.

  • It frees our reviewers to work on cases where human expertise is needed to understand the

  • context or nuance of a situation.

  • In Q1, for example, almost 90% of graphic violence content that we removed or added

  • a warning label to was identified using AI.

  • This shift from reactive to proactive detection is a big change, and it will make Facebook

  • safer for everyone.

  • I also want to talk about privacy.

  • GDPR was an important moment for our industry.

  • We did see a decline in monthly actives in Europe, down by about 1 million people as

  • a result.

  • And at the same time, it was encouraging to see the vast majority of people affirm that

  • they want us to use context, including from websites they visit, to make their ads more

  • relevant and improve their overall product experience.

  • Looking ahead, we will continue to invest heavily in security and privacy because we

  • have a responsibility to keep people safe.

  • But, as I've said on past calls, we're investing so much in security that it will significantly

  • impact our profitability.

  • We're starting to see that this quarter.

  • But, in addition to this, we also have a responsibility to keep building services that bring people

  • closer together in new ways as well.

  • Now, in light of increased investment in security, we could choose to decrease our investment

  • in new product areas, but we're not going to, because that wouldn't be the right way

  • to serve our community and because we run this company for the long term not for the

  • next quarter.

  • And Dave will talk about this in a few minutes.

  • Now, perhaps one of the most important things we've done this year to bring people closer

  • together is to shift News Feed to encourage connection with friends and family over passive

  • consumption of content.

  • We've launched multiple changes over the last half to News Feed that encourage more interaction

  • and engagement between people, and we plan to keep launching more like this.

  • Now, of course, connecting isn't limited to News Feed.

  • Now, there are more than 200 million people that are members of meaningful groups on Facebook,

  • and these are communities that, upon joining, they become the most important part of your

  • Facebook experience and a big part of your real world social infrastructure.

  • These are groups for new parents, for people with rare diseases, for volunteering, for

  • military families deployed to a new base and more.

  • We believe there is a community for every one on Facebook.

  • And these meaningful communities often spend online and offline and bring people together

  • in person.

  • We found that every great community has an engaged leader.

  • But running a group can take a lot of time.

  • So we have a road map to make this easier.

  • That will enable more meaningful groups to get formed, which will help us to find relevant

  • ones to recommend to you, and eventually achieve our five-year goal of helping 1 billion people

  • be a part of meaningful communities.

  • Now, since the 1970s, there has been this long decline in people joining physical groups

  • around the world, and that has contributed to a broad feeling of loneliness and isolation.

  • But if we can help 1 billion people be a part of something meaningful, then that can help

  • reverse this trend.

  • Talking about being a part of something meaningful, it's been inspiring to see how people are

  • using our fundraising tools to make a difference.

  • Last month, a campaign to raise $1,500 for undocumented children separated from their

  • families at the border ended up going viral and raising more than $20 million from more

  • than 0.5 million donors all around the world.

  • This quarter, we added the ability for pages to create and donate to fundraisers for causes

  • that they care about too.

  • This quarter, we also reached a milestone with now more than 1 billion actives on Instagram.

  • And this is a moment to reflect on how this acquisition has been an amazing success.

  • When Instagram joined us the team had only 16 people.

  • And since then, Kevin and the team have built Stories, Direct, and now IGTV.

  • This has been a story of great innovation and product execution.

  • And it's also a story of how effective the integration has been.

  • We believe Instagram has been able to use Facebook's infrastructure to grow more than

  • twice as quickly as it would have on its own.

  • So a big congratulations to the Instagram team and to all the teams across our company

  • that have contributed to this success.

  • I'm really excited about video too.

  • And this quarter, we launched IGTV.

  • People are watching less TV, but more video, but most video is not yet optimized for mobile.

  • IGTV will help solve that problem.

  • It's designed specifically for mobile and makes watching long-form vertical video from

  • creators easy.

  • There's a stand-alone IGTV app, but you can also watch within the Instagram app, so that

  • means the entire Instagram community has been able to use it from the start.

  • We're also seeing Watch start to grow more quickly on Facebook too.

  • Our teams are focused on building new experiences that help people connect and start conversation.

  • We recently rolled out Watch Party to all groups, so you can watch and chat with friends

  • at the same time.

  • And we're seeing some real traction with some of the original program, from the talk show

  • Red Table Talk, featuring Jada Pinkett Smith, to Skam, an interactive series that started

  • in Norway and features a new style of storytelling where the characters have accounts on Facebook

  • and Instagram, and key parts of the story are told not just through video, but through

  • posts on their pages.

  • Stories continue to be a big part of the future of sharing too, and they're growing quickly

  • across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.

  • While we started off just implementing the basic Stories format, we've now moved well

  • beyond it, and have built lots of new features like polls, questions, and collaborative stories

  • and groups and events.

  • And we're also making progress developing Stories into a great format for ads.

  • We've made the most progress here on Instagram, but this quarter, we started testing Stories

  • ads on Facebook too.

  • The other major trend we're seeing is the shift to more private messaging.

  • There's a lot to build here.

  • We've been testing payments on WhatsApp in India, and it gives people a really simple

  • way to send money to each other and contribute to greater financial inclusion.

  • And of the people who have tested this, feedback and usage have been very strong.

  • All signs point to a lot of people wanting to use this when the government gives us the

  • green light.

  • And in the meantime, we've broadened our focus to building this for other countries so we

  • can give more people this ability faster.

  • Over the next five years, we're focused on building out the business ecosystem around

  • messaging on WhatsApp and Messenger.

  • More broadly, our strategy is to use Facebook's computing infrastructure, business platforms

  • and security systems to serve people across all of our apps.

  • For example, we made the decision a decade ago to build our own data centers, and we

  • opened our first custom-built data center in 2011.

  • Today, we have six data centers around the world, and we're working on building eight

  • more.

  • We're using AI systems in our global community operations team to fight spam, harassment,

  • hate speech, and terrorism across all of our apps to keep people safe.

  • And this is incredibly useful for apps like WhatsApp and Instagram as it helps us manage

  • the challenges of hyper-growth there more effectively.

  • Beyond apps and looking at the next 10 years, we're making a lot of progress with virtual

  • reality.

  • Our goal is to create that feeling of presence like you're right there with people you care

  • about even if you might be halfway around the world.

  • Oculus Go is off to a good start, and at $199, it's going to be how a lot of people experience

  • virtual reality for the first time.

  • Overall, this is a critical year for Facebook.

  • We've made progress preventing abuse, forged ahead with new innovation, and are adapting

  • our services to the new trends of messaging, Stories, videos and groups.

  • As always, thank you for being a part of this journey, and I'm looking forward to making

  • more progress together.

  • And now, here is Sheryl to talk about our business.

  • Hi, everyone.

  • It was a good second quarter with ad revenue growing 42% year-over-year.

  • Mobile ad revenue was $11.9 billion, a 50% increase year-over-year, making up approximately

  • 91% of total ad revenue.

  • Our growth, again, was broad-based across regions, marketer segments and verticals.

  • We are working to ensure that Facebook is a safe place for people and businesses.

  • We've taken strong steps to address a number of issues, including election integrity, fake

  • news and protecting people's information.

  • One of the most important things we can do to affect change is to increase transparency

  • because transparency leads to greater accountability.

  • For example, when anyone can see any ad on Facebook, advertisers have to stand behind

  • the ads they run.

  • Transparency also allows us to get more input from our community and from experts around

  • the world, so that we can find and fix problems.

  • We wish we could find everything ourselves, but we never will, so we're building tools

  • to make it easier for people to report issues to us.

  • As Mark mentioned, this quarter, we took major steps to make advertising in pages more transparent.

  • Now anyone can see all the ads a page is running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and

  • Audience Network.

  • You can also learn more about pages even if they don't advertise.

  • You can see when a page was created and if they've changed their name.

  • For political and issue ads, we're going even further.

  • Advertisers placing ads with political content are now required to verify their identity

  • and location.

  • These ads will be labeled with a disclosure about who paid for them and saved in a searchable

  • archive.

  • The vast majority of ads on Facebook are run by legitimate organizations from small businesses

  • looking for new customers to advocacy groups raising money for their causes.

  • But we've seen that bad actors can misuse our products too, so we're erring on the side

  • of transparency.

  • We're being intentionally broad in our interpretation of political and issue ads.

  • This includes ads for books about politicians and brand campaigns that touch on national

  • issues.

  • Given our commitment to transparency, we think it's important to apply this policy to more

  • ads rather than fewer.

  • These steps are just the start.

  • We'll keep looking for ways to improve, and we hope these tools become standard across

  • the industry.

  • As we make these investments in transparency and accountability, we remain focused on our

  • key priorities: helping businesses leverage the power of mobile, developing innovative

  • ad products, and making our ads more relevant and effective.

  • First: leveraging the power of mobile.

  • For businesses, winning on mobile now means winning on video.

  • Globally, people are creating and watching more video, especially on mobile devices.

  • According to eMarketer, nearly a quarter of the world's population will watch video on

  • a mobile phone this year.

  • We see this trend toward video across all of our apps, from people sharing more video

  • with their friends on Facebook, to watching more video from creators on Instagram, to

  • having more video calls on WhatsApp and Messenger.

  • Marketers are making more video of their own.

  • We're seeing healthy growth in video ads among all advertiser segments.

  • M&M's UK recently used mobile-optimized five-second video ads on Facebook and Instagram to introduce

  • M&M's Mix, a bag of three kinds of M&M's in one.

  • Their campaign worked, driving results not just for their new product but for the brand

  • overall.

  • Their sales increased by over 10% and 80% of that came from households that had not

  • bought M&M's in the previous 26 weeks.

  • Second: developing new ad products.

  • We know that creating video can be more difficult for small businesses that have fewer resources,

  • so we've launched new tools on Facebook to help anyone make videos that work well on

  • mobile.

  • Last quarter, we released Ads Animator, a simple way to create eye-catching video ads

  • using photos and other content that's already on a company's Facebook page.

  • We're also testing Video Creation Kit, which gives advertisers easy-to-use video templates

  • for different marketing objectives.

  • By learning what performs best across our platform, we can help other businesses succeed.

  • We're also making it easier to run ads on Instagram and in Stories.

  • Ads in Stories are an immersive engaging way for people to interact with businesses.

  • When online retailer Overstock wanted to gain new customers and increase furniture sales,

  • they ran video ads in Instagram Stories with a shop now button.

  • They saw an 18% increase in return on ad spend and a 20% decrease in cost per acquisition.

  • This quarter, we made it easier for more advertisers to adopt the Stories format.

  • When an advertiser uploads video in a square or horizontal format for feed, we can automatically

  • transform it into the full-screen vertical format of Stories.

  • Third: making our ads more relevant and effective.

  • We're building new products and improving existing ones to ensure advertisers can reach

  • the right audience.

  • For example, automatic placements help advertisers get better results by showing ads across our

  • platform wherever they'll perform best and at the lowest cost.

  • SumUp, a German payment start-up that helps small businesses accept debit and credit cards,

  • switched from manual to automatic placements and increased sales by 34% in one week.

  • Advertisers of all sizes want to know if their ads are working and how to make them better,

  • but smaller businesses don't always have this capability.

  • We're changing that.

  • Last year, we introduced Test and Learn, a way for advertisers to run variations of their

  • ads and measure the results in just a few steps.

  • We started with tools for direct response advertisers to figure out what drives conversions.

  • In Q2, we added a way for companies to understand the effect of their ads on brand perception.

  • We plan to roll this out to all advertisers, big and small, so they can easily experiment

  • with different strategies and find the ones that work best.

  • As always, I'm grateful to our teams around the world.

  • Their work over the past several months has helped millions of businesses grow and created

  • new levels of transparency in advertising.

  • I'd also like to thank our partners and the businesses of all sizes who turned to us to

  • reach their customers and give us the feedback that helps make us better.

  • Thank you.

  • And now, here's Dave.

  • Thanks, Sheryl, and good afternoon, everyone.

  • Let's start with our community metrics.

  • Daily active users on Facebook reached 1.47 billion, up 11% compared to last year, led

  • by growth in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

  • This number represents approximately 66% of the 2.23 billion monthly active users in Q2.

  • MAUs were up 228 million or 11% compared to last year.

  • It's worth noting that MAU and DAU in Europe were both down slightly quarter-over-quarter

  • due to the GDPR roll out, consistent with the outlook we gave on the Q1 call.

  • As Mark mentioned, we're also introducing a family-wide audience metric, 2.5 billion

  • people worldwide used one of our applications in June.

  • This is our best estimate of our de-duplicated audience across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger,

  • and WhatsApp.

  • We believe this number better reflects the size of our community and the fact that many

  • people are using more than one of these services.

  • Note that, for comparison purposes, Facebook MAU does count multiple accounts for a single

  • user when such accounts exist, and we estimate those represent approximately 10% of our Facebook

  • MAU as previously disclosed in the limitation of key metrics section in our SEC filings.

  • The family audience metric only counts a single user in these instances.

  • Turning now to the financials; all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise

  • noted.

  • Q2 total revenue was $13.2 billion, up 42% or 38% on a constant currency basis.

  • Foreign exchange tailwinds contributed approximately $370 million of revenue in Q2.

  • Q2 ad revenue was $13 billion, up 42% or 38% on a constant currency basis.

  • In terms of ad revenue by region, Europe and Asia-Pacific both grew fastest at 47% each

  • and benefited from foreign exchange tailwinds.

  • I'd note that European ad revenue growth decelerated more quickly than other regions and was impacted

  • primarily by reduced currency tailwinds and, to a lesser extent, the roll out of GDPR.

  • Mobile ad revenue was $11.9 billion, up 50%, and represents approximately 91% of ad revenue.

  • In Q2, the average price per ad increased 17% and the number of ad impressions served

  • across our services increased 21%, driven primarily by ads in feed on Instagram and

  • Facebook.

  • Payments and other fees revenue was $193 million, up 23%.

  • Turning now to expenses; total expenses were $7.4 billion, up 50%.

  • We ended Q2 with over 30,000 full-time employees, up 47% compared to last year.

  • Operating income was $5.9 billion, representing a 44% operating margin.

  • Our effective tax rate in the quarter was 13%.

  • Net income was $5.1 billion or $1.74 per share.

  • Capital expenditures were $3.5 billion, driven by investments in data centers, servers, network

  • infrastructure, and office facilities.

  • In Q2, we generated $2.8 billion of free cash flow and ended the quarter with approximately

  • $42 billion in cash and investments.

  • And, in the second quarter, we bought back approximately $3.2 billion of our Class A

  • common stock.

  • Turning now to the revenue outlook; our total revenue growth rate decelerated approximately

  • 7 percentage points in Q2 compared to Q1.

  • Our total revenue growth rates will continue to decelerate in the second half of 2018,

  • and we expect our revenue growth rates to decline by high-single digit percentages from

  • prior quarters sequentially in both Q3 and Q4.

  • There are several factors contributing to that deceleration.

  • For example, we expect currency to be a slight headwind in the second half versus the tailwinds

  • we have experienced over the last several quarters.

  • We plan to grow and promote certain engaging experiences like Stories that currently have

  • lower levels of monetization, and we are also giving people who use our services more choices

  • around data privacy, which may have an impact on our revenue growth.

  • Turning now to expenses; we continue to expect that full-year 2018 total expenses will grow

  • in the range of 50% to 60% compared to last year.

  • In addition to increases in core product development and infrastructure, this growth is driven

  • by increasing investment in areas like safety and security, AR/VR, marketing, and content

  • acquisition.

  • Looking beyond 2018, we anticipate that total expense growth will exceed revenue growth

  • in 2019.

  • Over the next several years, we would anticipate that our operating margins will trend towards

  • the mid-30s on a percentage basis.

  • We expect full-year 2018 capital expenditures will be approximately $15 billion, driven

  • by investments in data centers, servers, network infrastructure, and office facilities.

  • We plan to continue to grow capital expenditures beyond 2018 to support global growth and our

  • ongoing product needs.

  • Turning now to tax; at current stock prices, we expect our full-year 2018 tax rate will

  • be in the mid-teens, but that our Q3 tax rate will be 25% to 30% due to a one-time charge

  • related to a recent court ruling in the IRS versus Altera case.

  • As a reminder, fluctuations in our stock price will impact our tax price.

  • In summary, our community and business growth remain solid.

  • Our financial strength has enabled us to invest heavily to improve our ability to serve our

  • global community through our family of apps as well as to prepare us for the future.

  • With that, operator, let's open up the call for questions.

  • Your first question comes from the line of Brian Nowak from Morgan Stanley.

  • Thanks for taking my questions.

  • Two.

  • Just the first one on monetization of Facebook core versus Instagram; can you talk a little

  • bit about how you think about monetization levels and the key drivers currently and,

  • going forward, when we think about ad load, pricing and the importance of ad improvements

  • across the two platforms over the next, call it, year or so?

  • And the second one on Instagram TV, maybe just talk about how you look atthink

  • about the core consumer offering, how it varies from Facebook Watch and, philosophically,

  • how you think about investing in premium content or sports content across these two products.

  • Thanks.

  • Brian, I'll take the first one.

  • In terms of Facebook versus Instagram, they're obviously both contributing to revenue growth.

  • Instagram is growing more quickly and making an increasing contribution to growth.

  • And we've been pleased with how Instagram is growing.

  • Facebook and Instagram are really one ads ecosystem.

  • I think, from a supply perspective, both now from a feed perspective are at similar ad

  • loads.

  • Instagram has more heavy usage of Stories, so that's an area of continued growth opportunity

  • because the effective levels of monetization in Stories are lower.

  • On the demand side, we see a good traction across both platforms, and we're rolling out

  • more ability for advertisers to leverage ads in Stories with more formats and the like.

  • So that's, again, an important opportunity for growth is just continuing to build out

  • more products on the demand side for Stories.

  • And I can take the second part of the question about thewhat we're trying to do with

  • IGTV and Watch at the same time.

  • The IGTV product approach is very focused on helping people connect with creators in

  • a mobile-native vertical video format and helping people not only see content that they

  • love from people that they want to follow, but build a community around those creators,

  • which is what we see people are trying to do.

  • And creators now uniquely have the ability to both reach a large audience and connect

  • and engage the community through the social network on Instagram at the same time.

  • With Watch, a lot of what we're trying to do is make it so the video content that's

  • on Facebook and some of the content that we're acquiring through original programming that

  • people can come together with their friends to watch that content through things like

  • Watch Party and engage and build community that way.

  • So there's a big space here in terms of helping people have real connections and interactions

  • around video.

  • These are two different takes on this.

  • Overall, what you're going to see from us on video is not just try to optimize for overall

  • watch time, but to optimize for building products that help bring people together and help facilitate

  • real interactions between people.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan from UBS.

  • Thanks for taking the question.

  • Maybe going back to the OpEx and your comments, Dave, looking out sort of medium to longer

  • term, just wanted to understand if we can get a little bit more color on some of the

  • drivers of that.

  • How much of it could be video in support of where you want to take the business over the

  • medium and long term versus things that maybe don't necessarily have a revenue component

  • to them like the security and the protection of the ecosystem that the whole team has been

  • talking about since the end of last year?

  • Thanks so much.

  • Yeah, Eric, it's going to be a combination of those factors.

  • I would say we're going to continue to invest in core product development and infrastructure.

  • And so, you've seen that already in terms of the ramp that we have in capital expenditures.

  • We're continuing to build out features and functionality for the community across a wide

  • range of different products, whether it be the ad products that Sheryl talked about or

  • IGTV and the like.

  • In addition to those core developments, we're also making the significant long-term investments

  • in safety and security.

  • Those investments are in the billions of dollars per year.

  • Those will have a negative impact on margins.

  • We think that's the right thing to do for the business in terms of ensuring the community's

  • safety and security and the durability of the franchise.

  • So those are important investments from an ROI perspective, but they don't have, obviously,

  • immediate translation into revenue dollars.

  • Secondly, we're continuing to make big investments in innovation.

  • Those, we believe, are attractive long-term investments.

  • The things that I would point to are things like AI as well as our investments in AR and

  • VR.

  • Those are things that will play outAI in the near-term, but the investments in AR

  • and VR are really about building the next generation of computing, and that's got a

  • longer-term return window.

  • So, attractive investments we believe, but ones that will take longer-term to pay off,

  • and those would have a dilutive effect on margins in the near-term.

  • Those are the two factors that I would point to.

  • In addition, on the CapEx side, we're continuing to invest heavily on capital expenditures,

  • first, to just get ahead of user growth and engagement and then also to make sure that

  • we've got the compute available to support the growth of a number of the key drivers

  • of our business around feed ranking and ads ranking.

  • So, I think those are the things that I would point to, all factoring into the margin guidance

  • that I gave.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Ross Sandler from Barclays.

  • Your next question is from the line of Ross Sandler from Barclays.

  • Hi.

  • Can you hear me?

  • Yes.

  • Can you guys hear me?

  • Yes.

  • Yes.

  • Okay.

  • Sorry.

  • Dave, I think you said that the quarter-on-quarter growth rates are going to be high-single digits

  • lower than the prior-year quarter-on-quarter growth rates versus 3Q and 4Q.

  • That would imply around a 20% year-on-year growth rate exiting fourth quarter.

  • So just want to clarify, is that what you actually said?

  • And if so, what's driving this fairly dramatic deceleration in revenue growth?

  • Ross, so, yes, so we grew at 42% in the current quarter and we would expect decel in the high-single

  • digits for the next couple quarters.

  • In terms of what is driving the deceleration, it's a combination of factors, and I think

  • I outlined those in my commentary.

  • First of all, there's the currency, which is going from being a tailwind to being a

  • modest headwind, we expect.

  • Secondly, we're going to be focusing on growing engaging new experiences like Stories and

  • promoting those.

  • And that's going to have a negative impact on revenue growth.

  • And then, finally, we're giving people who use the services more choice around privacy,

  • and that's coming both in terms of impacts that could be ongoing from things like GDPR

  • as well as other product options that we're providing that could have an impact on revenue

  • growth.

  • So it's a combination of all those factors that is leading to the deceleration of revenue

  • growth in the second half.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth from JPMorgan.

  • Great.

  • Thanks for taking the question.

  • A question for Mark.

  • I was hoping you could talk about the company's focus on meaningful social interactions.

  • Several months into some of those changes, do you think behavior on platform has shifted

  • at all?

  • And would you expect the improvements in the experience to ultimately drive a rebound in

  • core Facebook engagement?

  • Thanks.

  • Sure.

  • So, we've launched a number of changes that are focused towards trying to encourage more

  • interaction at the expense of some passive consumption on the network.

  • And we found that these have generally encouraged more interaction or positives, so we're going

  • to keep on moving in this direction.

  • We're doing this for a number of reasons.

  • One is that we just started getting a lot of feedback from people in the community that

  • they wanted Facebook to be more about connecting with people, which is really the core of what

  • it's always been, less so about viral videos or news content and just passive consumption.

  • So that's one.

  • Another big driver is we've focused on trying to make sure that we understand the effects

  • of using our services on people's well-being.

  • That's important for all companies.

  • And the research there is very clear that when people are using the Internet, and including

  • our services, to interact with other people, that's associated with all the positive elements

  • of well-being that you'd expect: feeling more connected, feeling less lonely, feeling happier,

  • and long-term measures of health but when you're simply using the Internet to passively

  • consume content that isn't necessarily associated with positive improvements to well-being.

  • So, both because of the feedback that we were getting and the research, we felt like this

  • was really the right direction to go in.

  • We're seeing positive signs in terms of how it's encouraging people to interact more.

  • Of the usage on the platform, we do think that that is the most valuable usage, but

  • that's why we're going in that direction.

  • And everything that we've seen so far suggests to us that we should continue moving in that

  • direction more.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Heather Bellini from Goldman Sachs.

  • Great.

  • Thank you.

  • And, Mark, thank you for all the detailed commentary in the beginning.

  • I was just wondering if you could share with us, as you look ahead over the next 12 to

  • 24 months and you think of assets that you have that you aren't currently monetizing

  • in material ways, which of those do you think aboutwhen you think about kind of layering

  • on the next leg of the stool, if you will, which one of those would you expect us or

  • would you expect to see start to contribute in a more meaningful way over the next couple

  • of years?

  • How would you rank order those assets that are not currently being monetized in a significant

  • way at this point?

  • Thank you.

  • I'll take it.

  • So, obviously, we started with ads in Facebook, and that was something we have grown and they

  • continue to grow.

  • The ads have expanded quite nicely to Instagram, and Instagram represents a very healthy part

  • of the growth and we expect that to continue as well.

  • When you think about things that are further out, I think you then start talking about

  • our messaging apps.

  • We are furthest ahead in Messenger, but it's still very early days.

  • We're quite happy with consumer engagement with 1.3 billion monthly actives on the platform,

  • and we continue to see a lot of organic connections between businesses and consumers on the messaging

  • platform.

  • We now have over 8 billion messages sent between people and businesses per month, which includes

  • automated messages.

  • We're being very slow and deliberate with monetization.

  • It's still in early days.

  • But I think we've launched some things that people are excited about and interested in

  • like click-to-Messenger ads.

  • We also have some early nice results we can share from clients.

  • One of them recently was LEGO.

  • They launched a Messenger bot to help with gift recommendations, and they created a click-to-Messenger

  • ads that link to a LEGO bot which helped provide product and gift recommendations.

  • They reached people over 25 years old in the U.S., UK, France and Germany, and targeted

  • people who are interested in LEGO toys and shopping, and they found a 3.4 times higher

  • return on ad spend for click-to-Messenger ads versus those that just linked to the LEGO

  • website.

  • And I share that case because it shows what we're excited about.

  • We're excited about a new surface where businesses can interact with consumers, but also really

  • a new functionality.

  • If you go further out, you would then start thinking about WhatsApp.

  • We are very focused there on the user experience, but we're also focused even earlier stages

  • on growing our business ecosystem.

  • The WhatsApp Business app has launched, and we now have more than 3 million people actively

  • using it to test business solutions.

  • So that's further out, but we think it has potential as well.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney from RBC Capital Markets.

  • Two questions, please; a near term one and a long term one.

  • The near term one is can you just comment on what you're seeing in terms of MAU recovery

  • growth trends in Europe?

  • You haven't – you gave us what turned out to be a pretty accurate read into the June

  • quarter, so do you have a read into whether things have based out and started to improve

  • again post GDPR implementation?

  • And then, I know, Sheryl, you just talked about this, but can I just ask you to just

  • maybe comment a little bit more on Facebook Messenger?

  • I've just seen the ad units there.

  • They seem to bethere seemed like there's been a pickup recently in implementation of

  • ads there that seemed to me to be highly effective and reasonably well targeted.

  • So any learnings just from those, the basic ad units that you put in there beyond the

  • kind of the business metrics you just reported on?

  • Thank you.

  • Hey, Mark.

  • It's Dave.

  • On Europe, yeah, we don't have any update on trends.

  • We had indicated in the first quarter that we would expect to see a decline.

  • We're not providing any guidance on MAU and DAU in Europe on this call.

  • In terms of number two, we have an ad model where we're able to use the targeting capabilities

  • for Facebook.

  • But when we put ads into a new surface, we obviously learn and evolve.

  • So, one example of some of the things that we're excited about, again, are the click-to-Messenger

  • ads.

  • That's something we can put in News Feed in Instagram and Messenger and it both grows

  • the ecosystem and creates a new opportunity for interaction.

  • We also have inbox ads where we're enabling advertisers to extend their reach to people

  • in Messenger, which is still really early.

  • And we're also in the early days of sponsored messages, which enable businesses to reengage

  • people once a conversation has started.

  • And so, when we think about the format of Messenger, we think about the direct correspondence

  • between a person, either an existing or a potential client or with a business, and we

  • think there are many times in kind of a life cycle of interacting with a business where

  • that's a very attractive opportunity.

  • Your next question comes from the line of John Blackledge from Cowen.

  • Great.

  • Thanks.

  • Mark or Sheryl, could you discuss your view about the importance of Instagram as a discovery

  • platform for new and/or emerging brands and merchants?

  • And then, over time, as these merchants and brands mature, how do you view Instagram's

  • ability to monetize?

  • And then just a quick one on North American ad revenue; it was a bit lower than we expected

  • in the second quarter.

  • Don't know if you guys have any color there.

  • Thank you.

  • On the first, when we think about Instagram, we think we have a great opportunity; 25 million

  • Instagram business profiles, 2 million advertisers.

  • We're growing quite nicely across brand and DR.

  • And with 1 billion active people on the platform, I think Instagram is definitely both a direct

  • response opportunity but an opportunity for discovery.

  • Part of it's the format.

  • The format is so visually appealing and people are telling stories with pictures, so we see

  • both anecdotally and in the data that this is a great place for people to become aware

  • of a product in the first place.

  • And we see a lot of small businesses really able to do things on the platform.

  • I'll share a recent example.

  • We just launched a shopping experience that was just expanded in Q2 to all consumers in

  • an additional 45 countries.

  • DefShop is an e-commerce fashion brand in Germany.

  • They were an early tester for IG Shopping.

  • And what they did in that test is tag each article of clothing.

  • They had 56% more website visitors and a 64% increase in sales for tagged products.

  • And I think a lot of those were discovered and purchased right through that advertising

  • funnel.

  • John, its Dave.

  • Just on the North American deceleration in ad revenue growth, kind of consistent with

  • the trends we've seen, so nothing there notable.

  • I would say we're pleased at the growth that we're seeing at the scale at which we're operating.

  • When you look at the deceleration, the one that I called out was really Europe where

  • you saw the currency impact as well as, to a lesser extent, GDPR causing sort of faster

  • deceleration than in the other regions.

  • I would say North America was more kind of within kind of what we're seeing across the

  • rest of the business.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Justin Post from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.

  • Great.

  • Thank you.

  • The guidance for the deceleration might raise some questions just on Facebook engagement.

  • So just wondering how you're seeing activity within just core Facebook right now?

  • Is it growing at a healthy rate?

  • And then, secondly, you have had a couple of months now with GDPR.

  • Just wondering how you're thinking about how that will impact your ad targeting over the

  • next year.

  • Thank you.

  • Sure, Justin.

  • I'll take that.

  • So we're continuing to see good growth in the Facebook ecosystem with 11% DAU growth.

  • And obviously, we've got broader family growth as well.

  • In terms of, I guess, going to the GDPR question, we've talked aboutoh, sorry.

  • Sheryl, were you going to take the GDPR question?

  • Yeah, I can talk about GDPR.

  • GDPR has not had a revenue impact, but we also recognize it wasn't fully rolled out

  • this quarter.

  • It was very encouraging for us to see that the vast majority of people affirmed that

  • they want us to use information, including from the websites they visit, to make their

  • ads more relevant.

  • But, as we look further out, we recognize that there's still risk, and we're going to

  • watch closely.

  • Advertisers are still adapting to the changes, so it's early to know the longer-term impact.

  • And things like GDPR and other privacy changes that may happen from us or may happen with

  • regulation could make ads more relevant.

  • One thing that we know that's not going to change is that advertisers are always looking

  • for the highest ROI opportunity.

  • And what's most important in winning budget is our relative performance in the industry,

  • and we believe we'll continue to do very well on that.

  • Your next question...

  • I'll give a little bit more colorsorry.

  • I wanted to give a little bit more color on some of the different regional trends we're

  • seeing on Facebook DAU.

  • U.S. and Canada, sort of consistent with past quarters, has been flat at about 185 million,

  • and we would expect that to continue to bounce around.

  • Europe, we saw the declines that we anticipated from GDPR.

  • And I would say there, really, those impacts were purely due to the GDPR impact, not other

  • engagement trends.

  • So I would point to that.

  • Otherwise, I think feeling good about Europe.

  • Worldwide, we've got kind of different puts and takes.

  • Indonesia had a SIM card registration requirement that caused a little bit of a headwind in

  • APAC.

  • And then rest of world, we saw some countries come back online like Ethiopia came back online.

  • So some different puts and takes, but overall, still seeing regional growth across all regions

  • with the exception of the U.S./Canada being flat.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Mark May from Citi.

  • Thanks.

  • Just following up on the comments, Sheryl mentioned that there's really no meaningful

  • impact on GDPR to the ad business, at least as of now.

  • But then, Dave, I think you mentioned that because you're giving people more control

  • over their privacy and data that this is one of the reasons why you're expecting the meaningful

  • decel in the second half; so just trying to recognize those two things.

  • Maybe the questions have been too specific around the impact of GDPR and should be more

  • broad around data and privacy?

  • And I guess, ultimately, the question is what impact, if any, these greater controls that

  • you're giving users having on ad revenue growth and monetization?

  • Thanks.

  • Sure, Mark.

  • Let me take that.

  • So GDPR didn't have a significant impact in Q2, partially because of its implementation

  • date.

  • So you're just seeing effectively one month of it in terms of revenue.

  • We do think that there will be some modest impact, and I don't want to overplay these

  • factors, but you've got a couple of things going on.

  • You've got the impact of the opt-outs.

  • And while we're very pleased with the vast majority of people opting into the third-party

  • data use, some did not.

  • So that will have a small impact on revenue growth.

  • And then we're seeing some impact from how advertisers are using their own data for targeting.

  • So, again, that will have a modest impact on growth.

  • And then in addition, we're continuing to focus our product development around putting

  • privacy first and that's going to, we believe, have some impact on revenue growth.

  • So it's really a combination of kind of how we're approaching privacy as well as GDPR

  • and the like.

  • So I think all of those factors together are one of the factors that we're talking about;

  • the other being, obviously, the currency flip.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Rich Greenfield from BTIG.

  • Hey.

  • Thanks for taking the question.

  • So I guess one of the things as you look at, you talked about the growth you're seeing

  • in users overseas or basically everywhere but the U.S. and Canada.

  • But when you look at ARPU, your ARPU outside, even in Europe, is still only a real tiny

  • fraction of where you are in the U.S. and, obviously in Asia and rest of world, an infinitesimal

  • fraction of where you are in the U.S.

  • How does that factor into as you think about your long-term guidance that you just talked

  • about, especially with margins moving towards the mid-30s, just given how early you are

  • in those non-U.S. markets and how much headroom they have to grow as those ad markets mature.

  • How do you have confidence that you, in that type of deceleration, when you look at how

  • much upside there is in that ARPU?

  • Yeah, I guess you've got a couple of different factors going on there.

  • You've got the opportunity, I think, for ARPU growth in those regions, and that's going

  • to depend on the mix of countries in those regions and the GDP per capita in those countries

  • as well as the relative size of the ad markets.

  • And that correlates very strongly to our opportunity and our potential ARPU.

  • And I think you've got upside growth potential in the long run in those markets.

  • As it relates to margin profile, you also just have the factor that you're increasing

  • growththe increasing mix of the business is shifting towards Asia and towards what

  • are currently lower ARPU markets.

  • And so, while those are very attractive, we believe, to serve both in the near and in

  • the long run, they're going to have a different impact on margin because the cost to support

  • those users relative to the revenue they bring in does have an impact on margins in the medium-term.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Anthony DiClemente from Evercore.

  • Thank you.

  • I have two; one for Sheryl and one for Mark.

  • Sheryl, in Dave's comments and the comments about the business impact of engagement shifting

  • to Stories versus feed products, if you could spell out for us I guess the specific reasons

  • why Stories monetization is not as strong as feed today and in the context perhaps of

  • what needs to happen in the future for Stories monetization to rebound to, let's say, parity

  • to where feed is today and sort of get through that negative impact.

  • And then, for Mark, I think perhaps Heather was getting at this in her question, but the

  • company's investing so much into owned data centers.

  • You talked about that I think in your prepared remarks.

  • Are there ways to improve the return on investment of those investments in data center servers,

  • network infrastructure?

  • And what I'm thinking is in order to perhaps service third-parties to maybe just improve

  • those returns in the way that other tech and Internet companies have in terms of investments

  • in infrastructure.

  • Thank you.

  • So, on Stories, we've seen great progress with Stories as a format for people to share

  • on our platforms.

  • We have 400 million people sharing with Instagram Stories, 450 million with WhatsApp Status.

  • Facebook is newer, but we're seeing good progress there.

  • The question is will this monetize at the same rate as News Feed?

  • And we honestly don't know.

  • We'll have to see what happens.

  • There are good reasons to be very optimistic about the monetization.

  • The opportunity, full-screen, authentic, very engaging, different format than feed, gives

  • us an opportunity to grow.

  • We also don't have all of our advertisers yet creating story ads.

  • So, obviously, as more and more advertisers come in and do that, the more and the better

  • ads we'll have.

  • I think getting that ramp will take a while because Stories is a new format, and we definitely

  • see that it takes a while for advertisers to adopt new formats.

  • I think one of the other things we feel good about over the long run, not really the short

  • run, is that since we have so many different places where you have Stories formats in Instagram

  • and WhatsApp and Facebook, as volume increases of the opportunity, advertisers get more interested.

  • But we won't know for a while if it's going to monetize at the same rate.

  • We do feel very good about a new and very engaging opportunity for ads.

  • Your next question...

  • And I can quickly answer the second part around data centers.

  • I mean the quick answer is that we're not planning on going in to the cloud services.

  • We're not planning on doing that.

  • We have to build out all this capacity to serve our community.

  • It's a very computationally and resource-intensive set of services that we provide and we need

  • to build that out.

  • We are very optimistic.

  • I'm very optimistic about AI overall and being able to use more computing resources to be

  • able to crunch more data to be able to rank News Feed and ads and search and friend suggestions,

  • and all the important things that we use our AI systems to do in addition to the integrity

  • and security work.

  • Part of the advance in AI technology now allows us to use more compute to use all the data

  • that's in the system to provide better results, so we certainly plan on doing that.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Peter Stabler from Wells Fargo Securities.

  • Thanks.

  • One for Sheryl and then one for Dave.

  • Sheryl, just on the SMB side, wondering if you could give us any color by region, if

  • possible.

  • And then secondly, on the go-to-market strategy, to what extent is Facebook dependent upon

  • or leveraging resellers versus small businesses discovering the ad platform on their own?

  • How key is that reseller channel for you on the small business side?

  • And then, for Dave, given that you've given us some kind of relatively specific guidance

  • on the revenue growth decel through the remainder of the year, I'm wondering if you could give

  • us some color on what that embeds from an FX expectation at this point.

  • Thank you very much.

  • So SMBs are very core to our business and, with over 80 million SMB pages that are using

  • Facebook on a monthly basis, we know they're core to theirs.

  • Our 6 million advertisers come from those pages, and so the fact that we have so much

  • room to grow is exciting for us.

  • We don't break this out by region, but we do see very strong SMB participation across

  • the board and around the world, particularly as SMBs come online, the more.

  • So, you can imagine that some of it goes with Internet penetration and Internet use.

  • In terms of resellers, we think it's a big opportunity.

  • We don't break that out either.

  • But, obviously, some of our ads are sold directly and bought directly through our online interfaces.

  • We also have third-parties that sell our ads and we welcome that as well.

  • Peter, its Dave.

  • Just on the FX, we're just looking at current rates and just rolling those forward, not

  • predicting what the rates will be, but rather looking at current rates and thus what the

  • impact would be if rates stay the same on the second half.

  • Your next question comes from the line of Brent Thill from Jefferies.

  • Thanks.

  • Dave, I want to go back to the magnitude of the deceleration.

  • I think many investors are having a hard time reconciling that type of deceleration considering

  • how good the advertiser feedback is on your platform.

  • And I realize you've outlined FX and Stories and the other factors, but is there something

  • that you're hearing now from advertisers that is giving you more confidence that they're

  • seeing something different about what we're all hearing right now?

  • It just seems like the magnitude is beyond anything we've seen, especially across a number

  • of tech names we all cover.

  • Yeah.

  • Brent, I'll take that.

  • And if Sheryl wants to add color, she should step in as well.

  • This is consistentwe consistently have seen over last eight quarters constant currency

  • deceleration.

  • So, there's a continuation of this trend.

  • I don't think there's anything beyond that in the factors that I outlined.

  • I would note we've been benefiting from continued growth across Instagram.

  • Instagram ad load in feed is at the same level as Facebook, so that would bethat's certainly

  • been helpful in our recent quarters.

  • So I think when you look at the factors going forward, I would say we've got the currency

  • impact, we've got some of the impacts around privacy and the like, but we continue to get

  • good advertiser feedback on ROI.

  • We continue to believe we're delivering great ROI for advertisers.

  • So I don't think there's anything from the advertiser perspective that's necessarily

  • playing out differently than expectations.

  • Sheryl can add any color there.

  • Yeah, I'd add there.

  • Even at decreasing growth rates, we are still growing and predicting growth at very healthy

  • rates, and that's based on returning for advertisers.

  • We're very focused on helping advertisers meet their ultimate goals, looking at their

  • ROI, looking at the return they get on ringing the cash register, whether that cash register

  • rings online or offline.

  • And we hear from them and we continue to see in our results that we continue to deliver

  • strong results.

  • So we have a lot of opportunity ahead of us.

  • We're going to continue investing in that opportunity.

  • And what we're hearing from advertisers all over the world is that they want to continue

  • to grow and invest with us as well.

  • Operator, we have time for one last question.

  • The last question comes from the line of Colin Sebastian from Robert W. Baird.

  • Great.

  • Thanks.

  • Just a couple of follow ups for me.

  • First off, Dave, maybe I missed this, but what timeframe are you referring to in terms

  • of getting down to the mid-30s operating margin?

  • And does that outlook assume any meaningful contribution from any of the new areas of

  • innovation that you highlighted on the call?

  • Just trying to figure out how much of that might be more conservatism.

  • And then, on the near-term trends and the midterm elections in the U.S., given the amount

  • of scrutiny that will exist in your platform, how should we think about your level of preparation

  • on one hand to manage content?

  • And then, on the other hand, is this part of the potential impact on monetization revenue

  • growth in the back half of the year that you're taking into consideration?

  • Thanks.

  • Sure, Collin.

  • Let me take a crack at that.

  • So, in terms of the guidance, I've given guidance.

  • This is several years, so more than two but less than many.

  • So it's over a timeframe more than two years is our expectation.

  • And then in terms of does that have any meaningful contribution from areas of innovation, we

  • talked about some of the areas that we're investing in.

  • Obviously, on the safety and security side, those are costs that are layering in that

  • we think are the right thing to do for the business but don't necessarily have a revenue

  • impact.

  • So it certainly takes those into account.

  • It also takes into account the ongoing investments we're making in the longer-term innovation

  • work, which I don't think will necessarily have any meaningful revenue relative to the

  • size of the business in those time frames.

  • We're also investing in things like video, Watch and the like, which have the potential

  • to condition tribute on the revenue side, but still relatively small in perspective

  • of the overall business.

  • All right.

  • And I can take the question on the midterm elections.

  • So, yes, the short answer is that we're much more confident that we're going to get this

  • right for the elections in the 2018, which include the U.S. midterms, but also the elections

  • in Brazil and upcoming elections in early-2019 in India and the EU.

  • And the reason why we're confident that we can get this right is because there have been

  • several elections since the 2016 ones that have had much better results, including the

  • French presidential election, the German elections, the Alabama special election, and the Mexican

  • election about a month ago.

  • And in each of thesegoing back to 2016, we werewe have a very big security team

  • that was focused on security around even the 2016 election and we found hacking and phishing

  • attacks that the Russian government was trying to do, and we notified the right people about

  • those.

  • But 2016 was really the first time that we saw this kind of coordinated information operation.

  • And since then, we've built the playbook out that has included building AI tools to identify

  • thousands of fake accounts and groups and pages that violate the policies.

  • It's included growing the security and content review teams to 20,000 people to be able to

  • handle the volume of work that we need to do.

  • And it includes a lot of the transparency work around advertising in general, but also

  • the political and issue ads archive and verifying all advertisers who are trying to run political

  • and issue ads.

  • There are a number of other things that we're doing too, including creating an external

  • program for independent academics to study how the impact of social media and how foreign

  • governments try to interfere in elections.

  • And that will have a longer-term impact as well.

  • But the short answer here is we've been very focused on this.

  • 2018 is a big year.

  • And because of the successful results that we've seen in a number of elections recently,

  • we feel like our road map and our level of preparation is much higher now than it has

  • been.

  • And we feel relatively confident going into these elections.

  • Great.

  • Thank you.

  • Thank you for joining us today.

  • We appreciate your time, and we look forward to speaking with you again.

  • Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call.

  • Thank you for joining us.

  • You may now disconnect your lines.

Good afternoon.

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