SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, acknowledging concerns about his company's stock performance, said Tuesday that Facebook has survived troubles before.
He spoke to a standing-room-only audience at a tech conference in San Francisco in his first interview since the company's rocky initial public offering in May. Facebook's stock has lost half its value since the IPO.
Zuckerberg, 28, said the drop "has obviously been disappointing," but he said it's a great time to "double down" on the company's future.
"Facebook has not been an uncontroversial company," Zuckerberg said. "It's not like this is the first up and down we have ever had."
Among other things, Facebook has repeatedly faced criticism and user rebellion over its policies and practices affecting data privacy.
Investors have been concerned about Facebook's ability to keep growing revenue, especially as more people use it from mobile devices, where this is less room to how ads.
Zuckerberg said it was "really easy for folks to underestimate how really fundamentally good mobile is for us."
He made it clear that Facebook wants to make money and will do that by figuring out mobile. Although Zuckerberg has long talked about the company's mission to make the world more open and connected, he acknowledged, "we can't just focus on that."
In a recent regulatory filing, Facebook said Zuckerberg does not plan to sell any shares in the company for at least the next 12 months. That proved to be a point of relief for investors who are worried about post-IPO "lock-up" expirations that allow early investors and insiders to sell their shares.
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