Meta announced its second quarter financial results on Wednesday (4/24)., Meta generated revenue of US$36.45 billion in this quarter, an increase of 27% over the same period last year. This was Meta’s largest quarter of growth in the past three years and the third consecutive quarter of growth of more than 20%. However, due to Meta’s plan to expand expenditures and the outlook for the next quarter being worse than analysts expected, Meta’s stock price fell 15% after the market closed that day, falling to $418.71.
Of the US$36.45 billion in revenue, up to US$36 billion was contributed by the Family of Apps, a growth of 27%, and operating profit was US$17.67 billion, a growth of 57%; while Mixed Reality (Reality Labs) The department contributed revenue of US$440 million, compared with US$339 million in the same period last year, with only minimal growth. The loss was US$3.846 billion, down from US$3.992 billion in the same period last year. Overall, Meta recorded earnings per share of $4.86 in the quarter, up from $2.21 in the same period last year.
It is worth noting that in this quarter, Meta only disclosed that the number of daily active users of its application family was 3.24 billion, an increase of 7%, and no longer released information on individual applications or more user numbers, whether it is Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger .
As of the end of March this year, Meta had 69,329 global employees, a year-on-year decrease of 10%.
Despite the stellar performance in the first quarter, Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li estimated that second-quarter revenue will fall between $36.5 and $39 billion, lower than analysts’ expectations. At the same time, Li also raised her forecast for total expenses for the full year. , revealed that investment in Reality Labs or AI will continue to increase, causing Meta to plummet after the market.
Meta recently announced that it will rename the operating system Quest OS of the VR device Quest to Horizon and open it up to hardware manufacturers to produce their own branded VR/MR devices. Li said that in addition to the ongoing product development of Reality Labs, It is also further expanding its investment in the ecosystem, and it is estimated that the loss in this department in the second quarter will be significantly higher than the same period last year.
At the same time, Li also stated that it will accelerate investment in infrastructure to support the company’s AI blueprint, and it is expected that capital expenditures will continue to increase next year.
according to《The Verge》According to reports, much of the discussion at Meta’s earnings conference focused on how to monetize AI. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that tens of millions of people have tried Meta AI. However, the real test is whether Meta AI will become a reality for people. products they use frequently, or if they want to use an AI assistant on social media.
Zuckerberg also proposed opportunities to monetize Meta AI, such as using it to deliver commercial messages, or introducing advertising or paid content into users’ interactions with Meta AI, or launching paid subscription services to allow people to use larger Model or computing resources. However, Zuckerberg also admitted that building a leading AI service is a huge task and may take several years to achieve the goal.
