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Facebook Cuts Costs as Meta Platforms Stock Tanks

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Facebook parent Meta Platforms posted earnings that fell short of forecasts on Wednesday, plunging the company’s stock in after-hours trading as the social media giant with metaverse ambitions scrambles to slash expenses amid advertising headwinds caused by global economic concerns.

The claim comes less than a month after billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined massive cost-cutting plans that included restructuring teams and implementing a hiring freeze.

According to Forbes, Meta reported a net income of $4.4 billion, or $1.64 per share, down 49% year on year and falling short of analyst forecasts of $1.89 per share; revenue of $27.7 billion was somewhat higher than the $27.4 billion forecasted, but down 4% year on year.

The corporation also stated that its revenue for the current quarter would be between $30 billion and $32.5 billion, which is at the lower end of average analyst projections.

Meta shares fell 11% to $115 soon after the report, bringing losses to more than 61% this year, significantly worse than the Nasdaq’s 30% drop.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post downgraded Meta shares to a neutral rating in a pre-earnings note, stating that the company’s investment in the immersive virtual reality world known as the metaverse “will remain [an] overhang” on the stock, costing an estimated $10.7 billion next year even as economic concerns potentially intensify.

Facebook Cuts Costs as Parent Meta Stock Tumbles in 4th Quarter

Meta Platforms Restructuring

The report comes less than a month after Meta Platforms revealed plans to cut costs by restructuring some departments and putting a hiring freeze as ad revenue growth slows amid growing economic pressures:

On Monday, an investor with more than $300 million in stock asked the corporation to cut costs further by laying off workers.

In the earnings release, Meta Platforms CFO David Wehner stated that the company has “increased scrutiny on all areas of operating expenses,” but it also stated that its employee headcount would remain roughly flat from current levels next year; in the third quarter, the company’s free cash flow, which measures cash left over after operating expenses, fell to $173 million from $9.5 billion a year ago.

$47.2 billion in total. That was the value of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, 38, after the market closed on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg’s fortune, once valued at more than $130 billion, has dropped by more than 60% since Meta stock peaked in September 2021.

VOR News

Meta Platforms Investor Urges CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Cut Costs

Mr. Zuckerberg, according to Altimeter Capital Chief Executive Brad Gerstner, must take urgent actions to streamline Meta’s operations and address a precipitous drop in the share price.

“Like many other organizations in a zero-rate environment,” Mr. Gerstner wrote in the letter, “Meta has gone into the realm of excess—too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency.” “Meta needs to rediscover its mojo.”

Meta Platforms shares have fallen more than 50% in the last 18 months, slashing the company’s market worth by more than $600 billion. On Wednesday, Meta will disclose profits after the bell.

Meta did not respond to the letter. Altimeter did not reply immediately to a request for comment.

According to FactSet, Altimeter, which manages over $18 billion, owned around 2.5 million Meta shares at the end of the second quarter. This position, at around $320 million, is not among Meta’s top 15 institutional shareholders.

Mr. Gerstner stated that his firm, which is based in Boston and has operations in Meta’s hometown of Menlo Park, Calif., has been a longtime shareholder in the company but now believes it needs to “become fit and focused.”

Mr. Gerstner stated that Meta should slash headcount expenses by 20%, reflecting the opinions of others who have recently suggested that digital businesses have become bloated with too many staff after years of expansion.

“It’s a well-kept secret in Silicon Valley that firms like Google, Meta, Twitter, and Uber could produce comparable levels of revenue with significantly fewer workers,” he claimed.

Meta reported 83,553 employees at the end of the second quarter, a 32% increase from the previous year.

Like many other IT companies, Meta has been slashing costs for months, dealing with slowed growth and growing competition.

Mr. Gerstner also advised the business to reduce its investment in the metaverse, which Mr. Zuckerberg has hailed as the company’s future and estimated would require more than $10 billion in annual spending.

Mr. Gerstner advised the corporation to cap its spending at $5 billion per year, describing Meta’s commitment as “super-sized and alarming, even by Silicon Valley norms.”

Despite enormous investment thus far, the company is falling short of its metaverse aspirations to create an immersive online experience where users may work, buy, and play.

According to The Wall Street Journal, their primary metaverse service for consumers, Horizon Worlds, has less than 200,000 monthly active users.

“People are perplexed as to what the metaverse even is,” Mr. Gerstner wrote.

Mr. Gerstner emphasized that he was not making demands and believed in Meta’s future.

Source: WSJ, Forbes, VOR News

Geoff Thomas is a seasoned staff writer at VORNews, a reputable online publication. With his sharp writing skills and deep understanding of SEO, he consistently delivers high-quality, engaging content that resonates with readers. Thomas' articles are well-researched, informative, and written in a clear, concise style that keeps audiences hooked. His ability to craft compelling narratives while seamlessly incorporating relevant keywords has made him a valuable asset to the VORNews team.

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Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s Project, Gets Better with a Cool New AI Model.

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Meta
Reuters

(VOR News) – The most recent version of Meta AI, which was created by Mark Zuckerberg and is accessible on social media platforms that are under the authority of the business, is now capable of accomplishing a great deal more than you might have thought it was able to accomplish in the past.

You might have assumed that it was capable of accomplishing anything, but this is a considerable advance over that perception. It is possible that you did not believe that it would be able to complete this particular duty.

What are your thoughts on this?

TechCrunch reports that Meta’s AI-powered assistant has recently been upgraded with a plethora of improvements, one of which being the introduction of the new “Imagine Yourself” generative AI model.

Meta recently updated its assistant, so we made this update.

All members of the general public have access to this most recent update. This upgrade for the assistant was just recently implemented with the purpose of enhancing the functioning of the helper.

On the other hand, what precisely is the new AI model capable of doing, and how does it operate when it makes use of its capabilities?

“The new generative AI model in Meta AI is the driving force behind a new feature that enables the option to make attractive selfies,” TechCrunch reports.

“This new feature enables users to create selfies that are captivating.” In response to the introduction of the new functionality, this feature was developed. The function was developed, as indicated by the information that is presented here.

It is possible for the Imagine Yourself model to make use of an image of a specific person in order to accomplish the goal of delivering visuals of that person.

The phrase “Imagine me” followed by anything that is not regarded to be “not safe for work” (NSFW) is an example of a prompt that can be used to prompt the model. In addition to that, this prompt can be utilised to prompt the respective model.

Imagine Yourself is currently accessible in beta form; however, Meta has not revealed the data that was used to train this artificial intelligence model.

This is despite the fact that the beta version is currently available. This is in spite of the fact that the model was informed by the data throughout its training.

According to TechCrunch, the terms of service for the company make it abundantly clear that any public posts or images that are affiliated with its platforms are open to scrutiny by the general public. This has been stated in the company’s terms of service.

This Meta information was obtained from this source.

Furthermore, Meta AI is providing new editing tools that simplify the process of adding, removing, amending, or adjusting things by applying easy prompts.

These tools are included in the company’s offerings. The availability of these instruments will not be difficult. Within a short period of time, these tools will be made available for offline download.

Within the following month, a completely new button that will be referred to as “Edit with AI” will be introduced. More options for fine-tuning the editing process will be made available to you when you click this button. Users will have the ability to access this button within the system.

Additionally, Meta has announced that within the next few days, users will have access to new shortcuts that will enable them to contribute images generated by Meta AI to feeds, articles, and comments across all Meta applications.

This initiative is expected to take place within the next few days. By virtue of the fact that Meta AI will be able to produce these photographs, this will be feasible. The abbreviated form of these shortcuts will be available to users for their convenience.

SOURCE: GN

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TSMC exceeded profit projections due to strong demand for AI chips.

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TSMC
Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun (AP)

(VOR News) – During the second quarter of the fiscal year 2024, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) recorded sales of $20.82 billion, which was higher than the estimates provided by analysts.

This is a forty percent improvement over the same time period the previous year. Over the same period of time in the previous year, the Taiwanese chipmaker posted earnings of NT$247.85 billion, which is equivalent to $7.6 billion.

This is a 36% increase. According to FactSet, analysts had expected that the company would take in a net income of NT$236.4 billion, which is equivalent to $7.3 billion, during the second quarter of 2024. This figure exceeded that forecast.

This represents a thirty percent increase when compared to the previous year, when the company declared a profit of eight hundred and eighteen billion NTD. This year, the share price of TSMC has climbed by almost 70 percent.

Apple relies on TSMC as a semiconductor manufacturer, and the company has an exclusive partnership with NVIDIA, a company that manufactures chips for artificial intelligence research and development.

Every consumer wants their electronic devices to be equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities, as stated by C.C. Wei, chief executive officer of TSMC.

The artificial intelligence market is currently dominated by TSMC.

I made this statement while I was having a discussion with analysts. He continued by stating that he anticipated that production will reach capacity by the year 2025 or 2026, but that supply would continue to be difficult to come by beyond then.

“I also attempted to achieve a balance between supply and demand, but I am unable to do so at this time,” he explained to reporters. As a result of the extremely high demand, I had to put in a lot of effort in order to fulfill the requirements of my clients.

The Taiwan-listed shares of the chipmaker experienced a decline of 2.43% by the time trading on Thursday came to a conclusion.

As a result of the demand from its customers, which include Apple and Nvidia, TSMC predicted in April that its revenues for the second quarter may increase by as much as thirty percent, which was a figure that exceeded the expectations.

In order to surpass the initial expectations, it increased its sales projections for the second quarter from $19.1 billion to between $19.6 billion and $20.4 billion between those two numbers.

In addition, TSMC made the announcement that it would continue to adhere to its plans to invest up to 32 billion dollars this year, the majority of which will be allocated to the development of innovative technology.

TSMC announced in June that their net revenue for the month of May increased to seven billion dollars, representing a thirty percent increase between the previous year and the current year.

The income of the company for the months of January through May climbed by 27% compared to the same period in the previous year.

This was despite a 2.7% decline from April for TSMC.

C.C. Wei, chairman and chief executive officer of TSMC, repeated past forecasts that the semiconductor industry, excluding the memory sector, will climb by 10% this year, with artificial intelligence being the primary driver of this growth.

Chip markets around the world, including those of TSMC, experienced a decline in the early hours of Wednesday as a result of comments made by former President Donald Trump that were critical of Taiwan and rumors that the administration of Vice President Joe Biden was purportedly considering imposing more stringent trade restrictions.

By the time the market closed, the shares of TSMC that are listed in Taiwan had experienced a decrease of 2.4%.

It has been claimed that the administration of Vice President Joe Biden is mulling over the idea of imposing an export embargo known as the foreign direct product rule on allies such as Japan and the Netherlands in the event that these countries continue to provide China advanced chipmaking technology.

SOURCE: QZ

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Nokia’s shares fell 8% after reporting its lowest quarterly net sales since 2015.

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Nokia
(Photo by Xavi Torrent/Getty Images)

(VOR News) – On Thursday, shares of Nokia, a Finnish telecom business, dropped after the company disclosed a decline in its operational profit for the second quarter that was around 32 percent lower than the previous quarter.

We were able to attribute this reduction to the fact that there was a dearth of demand for the 5G equipment that Nokia was producing.

By the time the market opened at nine o’clock London time, the stock of the business that is listed in Helsinki had already experienced a decline of eight percent.

Today, Nokia reported a comparable operating profit of $462 million.

This value was reported by the company. When compared Nokia to the 619 million euros that were recorded for the same period of time in the previous year, this implies a loss of roughly a third more than what was stated.

Data provided by LSEG indicates that the firm reported a decline in its net sales of 18%, bringing the total to 4.47 billion euros.

This Nokia represents the lowest level of net sales attained since the fourth quarter of 2015. This decline was attributed to “ongoing market weakness” by the corporation at the time of the decline.

“The most significant impact was the challenging comparison period from the previous year, which saw the peak of India’s rapid 5G deployment, with India accounting for three quarters of the decline,” Mr. Pekka Lundmark, CEO of Nokia, remarked in the announcement of the results. “The most significant impact was the challenging comparison period.”

Continuing along the same lines, he emphasized that the landscape in the mobile networks business continues to be “challenging as operators continue to be cautious.”

In spite of this, Nokia forecasts that the business situation will become “stabilizing” and that there will be a “significant acceleration in net sales growth in the second half” of the year. The order intake that was seen in the most recent quarter served as the basis for these forecasts.

According to the company’s CEO, “though the dynamic is showing signs of improvement, the recovery of net sales is occurring somewhat later than we had anticipated, which will have an effect on our business group’s net sales assumptions for the year 2024.”

Despite the fact that this has taken place, we are still well on our approach to fulfilling our full-year target, which is further supported by the early action that we have taken addressing cost.

The business continues to strive for a result that is either near to or slightly below the midpoint of its comparable operating profit prediction for the entire year, which ranges from 2.3 billion to 2.9 billion euros.

Nokia’s founders set this goal for the company.

AT&T, the largest telecommunications company in the United States, made the decision to select Ericsson as the provider for the construction of a telecom network that is completely based on a technology known as ORAN at the end of the previous year.

A severe blow was handed to Nokia by this decision, as the company had previously been awarded a significant contract in the North American market.

Both the Finnish company and its Swedish competitor, Ericsson, have initiated strong cost-cutting initiatives in the midst of an industry-wide fight against a slowing economy and infrastructure expenditure cuts from mobile carriers. Ericsson is a Swedish company that competes with the Finnish company.

The revelation that Nokia will be cutting off as many as 14,000 employees came in October, following the company’s realization that it had experienced a major decline in profitability during the third quarter.

By the year 2026, the company intends to achieve a reduction in its gross expenses of between 800 million and 1.2 billion euros within the time frame.

The business made the announcement on Thursday that it had made “significant progress” on its entire cost reduction program and that it had implemented actions with the goal of cutting expenses by a total of 400 million euros up to this time.

SOURCE: CNBC

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