Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the Meta Connect event at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 27, 2023.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
Meta shares jumped in extended trading on Wednesday after the company beat Wall Street estimates for revenue and profit and issued a better-than-expected forecast for the current period.
Here are the results:
- Earnings: $5.16 a share vs. $4.73 per share expected by LSEG
- Revenue: $39.07 billion vs. $38.31 billion expected by LSEG
Meta provided revenue guidance for the third quarter of $38.5 billion to $41 billion, or $39.75 billion at the middle of the range. Analysts were expecting a forecast of of $39.1 billion.
The company reported second-quarter revenue growth of 22% from $32 billion a year earlier, marking a fourth straight quarter of growth in excess of 20%.
Meta said expenses in the second quarter were $24.2 billion, which included the charge from Meta’s recent agreement to settle a facial recognition data lawsuit by the state of Texas for $1.4 billion.
The company reported capital expenditures of $8.47 billion for the second quarter, below the $9.51 billion that analysts estimated.
Meta said its expense outlook for the year remains unchanged at $96 billion to $99 billion. The company narrowed the range for capital expenditures. It’s now $37 billion to $40 billion, while the low number was previously $35 billion.
For user metrics, Meta reported that it had 3.27 billion daily active people (DAP) in the quarter, matching StreetAccount estimates. In the past, Meta reported daily and monthly active user numbers for its Facebook and Messenger apps. The DAP figure is the number of people accessing any of its apps.
Meta said that its headcount dropped 1% year-over-year to 70,799 as of June 30, 2024.
“We had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We’ve released the first frontier-level open source AI model, we continue to see good traction with our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, and we’re driving good growth across our apps.”
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