Meta (META) shares soared more than 9% in early trading Thursday after the company reported better-than-expected second quarter earnings results Wednesday, and despite warning it expects to see "significant" capital expenditures growth in 2025.
"While we do not intend to provide any quantitative guidance for 2025 until the fourth quarter call, we expect infrastructure costs will be a significant driver of expense growth next year as we recognize depreciation and operating costs associated with our expanded infrastructure footprint," CFO Susan Li said in a statement.
AI spending is a key measure for Wall Street as investors anxiously await a return on Big Tech’s investments in the technology. During its prior quarter, Li raised the company’s full-year total expense estimate from between $94 billion and $99 billion to between $96 billion and $99 billion.
For the second quarter, Meta saw earnings per share (EPS) of $5.16 on revenue of $39.07 billion. Analysts were expecting EPS of $4.74 on revenue of $38.3 billion, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Meta recorded EPS of $2.98 on revenue of $31.9 billion during the same period last year.
The company’s Family of Apps revenue, which includes revenue from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, clocked in at $38.72 billion, higher than estimates of $37.7 billion. Meta saw revenue of $31.7 billion in the segment in Q2 last year.
Beyond its advertising revenue, Wall Street is still trying to determine how much longer Meta will need to plow money into AI before it sees some kind of revenue payoff.
Last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta’s latest open-source large language model (LLM) called Llama 3.1. What’s more, the Facebook founder said the industry should focus on open-source AI rather than closed-source models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
"Meta is well positioned to drive value with [generative AI] for advertisers, but let’s be clear that it’s a ways off, if ever, before CMOs will simply hand over the keys to an AI agent that will autonomously generate ad creative on their behalf," Forrester research director Mike Proulx said in a note following Meta's earnings.
"While [generative AI's] technical capabilities meaningfully mature at an accelerated pace, Meta cannot lose sight of the responsibility and importance of the human touch in the advertising process.”
Meta’s Reality Labs segment, which includes its mixed reality hardware and software, saw revenue of $353 million in the quarter versus expectations of $376 million. That's better than the company reported in the same quarter last year, but the segment continues to hemorrhage cash.
In Q2, Meta reported that the segment lost some $4.49 billion, slightly below expectations of $4.53 billion. It lost $3.8 billion in Q1. The division has also been plagued by turnover and a lack of clear vision, adding to Reality Labs’ troubles, Yahoo Finance’s Yasmin Khorram reported.
Meta’s announcement also comes after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Tuesday that he secured a $1.4 billion settlement between the state and Meta over the company’s alleged use of Texans’ biometric data without their permission for its Tag Suggestions feature.
Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
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