Facebook, like Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft, reported a hefty profit climb during the June quarter, but warned that Apple’s new data collection rules will impact future earnings.

Facebook warned investors of “ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes”, which saw shares plummet by 5.2 per cent.

For now, things look rosy.

Sales in the June quarter climbed 56 per cent, to $29.1 billion, rocketing past the Wall Street estimate of $27.9 billion. Facebook, the product (as oppose to Facebook, the company) 1.91 billion daily active users to its social media platform, relatively unchanged from the prior quarter.

Facebook Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner explained that advertising revenue was the great unknown in the coming quarters.

“In the third and fourth quarters of 2021, we expect year-over-year total revenue growth rates to decelerate significantly on a sequential basis as we lap periods of increasingly strong growth,” Wehner said.

This comes as Google’s parent company Alphabet crowed of a 69 per cent in digital ad sales during the June quarter, buoyed by the accelerated move to online shopping.