“Although the transition to the new U.S. tax law resulted in an accounting charge in the third quarter, we continue to expect we will recognize significant cash tax savings for the remainder of the current year and future years under the new law, and this quarter's charge reflects the total expected impact from the transition to the new U.S. tax law.”

In context

“ucture operating costs associated with our expanded data center fleet, depreciation on our incremental CapEx spend and third-party cloud spend. We ended Q3 with over 78,400 employees, up 8% year-over-year, driven by hiring in priority areas of monetization, infrastructure, Reality Labs, Meta Superintelligence Labs as well as regulation and compliance. Third quarter operating income was $20.5 billion, representing a 40% operating margin. Q3 interest and other income was $1.1 billion driven primarily by unrealized gains on our marketable equity securities. Our tax rate for the quarter was 87%, which was unfavorably impacted by a onetime noncash reduction in deferred tax assets that we no longer anticipate using under new U.S. tax law. Our tax rate would have been 14%, excluding this charge. Although the transition to the new U.S. tax law resulted in an accounting charge in the third quarter, we continue to expect we will recognize significant cash tax savings for the remainder of the current year and future years under the new law, and this quarter's charge reflects the total expected impact from the transition to the new U.S. tax law. Net income was $2.7 billion or $1.05 per share. Excluding the onetime tax charge, our net income and EPS would have been $18.6 billion and $7.25 per share, respectively. Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases were $19.4 billion, driven by investments in servers, data centers and network infrastructure. Free cash flow was $10.6 billion. We repurchased $3.2 billion of our Class A common stock and paid $1.3 billion in dividends to shareholders. We ended the quarter with $44.4 billion in cash and marketable securities and $28.8 billion in debt. Turning now to the business outlook. There are 2 primary factors that drive our revenue performance. Our ability to deliver engaging experiences for our community and our effectiveness at monetizing that engagement over ti”