Meta Platforms Inc.’s stricter cost controls this year and a new $40 billion share buyback sent shares soaring on Wednesday, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg called 2023 the “Year of Efficiency.”
The parent of Instagram and Facebook, which has fallen on hard times amid a broad post-pandemic slump in digital ads, is focused on improving its content recommendations powered by artificial intelligence and its ad targeting systems to keep users clicking.
Meanwhile, it will cut costs in 2023 by $5 billion to a range of $89 billion to $95 billion, a steep drop from the $94 billion to $100 billion it previously forecast, and it projected first-quarter sales that could beat Wall Street estimates….