Meta published a report indicating that its financial performance for Q2 2024 exceeded analysts' estimates. Revenue, income, and the company's forecast for the upcoming quarter were all higher than expected.
Meta's Revenue for Q2 2024 was $39.07 billion compared to analysts' expectations of $38.31 billion, representing a 22% year-over-year growth — marking the fourth consecutive quarter the company has shown revenue growth of over 20%. The company's profit was $13.47 billion or $5.16 per share, while analysts predicted $4.73 per share — this corresponds to a 73% increase: in Q2 of the previous year, Meta's profit was $7.79 billion or $2.98 per share. According to the company's own forecast, revenue in Q3 is expected to range from $38.5 billion to $41 billion (averaging $39.75) — analysts had anticipated a forecast around $39.1 billion.
Meta's Positive Results indicate that it continues to gain market share in digital advertising, which constitutes the core of the company’s business. Advertising revenue, primarily generated from Facebook and Instagram, showed a 22% year-over-year growth. Last week, Alphabet reported an 11% increase in Google’s advertising sales, while YouTube did not meet analysts’ expectations.
Meta's Costs in Q2 amounted to $24.2 billion — this also included of the Texas case regarding the unauthorized use of facial recognition data, which cost the company $1.4 billion. Capital expenditures for Q2 were $8.47 billion, which is lower than the analysts' expectations of $9.51 billion. Meta maintained its cost forecast for 2024 at $96–99 billion; its forecast for capital expenditures of $35 billion was raised to a range of $37–40 billion. The number of daily active people (Daily Active People — DAP), meaning users who opened at least one of the company’s apps, reached 3.27 billion, which aligns with analysts' estimates.
The social media giant continues to implement on cost-cutting announced back in late 2022. A total of about 21,000 jobs were eliminated over several rounds of layoffs. Operating income rose by 58% year-over-year, reaching $14.9 billion; the operating margin increased from 29% to 38% during the same period. The workforce decreased by 1% year-on-year, totaling 70,799 employees as of June 30.
At the same time, Meta continues to invest heavily in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality — essential for building the metaverse. The company is investing in data centers and computing resources to compete against rivals. A significant increase in capital expenditures is expected in 2025 due to investments in research support and product development.
By the end of the year, Meta, according to its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will have 350,000 advanced Nvidia H100 AI system accelerators or 600,000 if including equipment from other models and manufacturers. Recently, the company presented a major upgrade to large language models Llama 3.1 — the most powerful has 405 billion parameters. Since the beginning of the year, Meta's shares have demonstrated a 34% growth; after the report was published, they gained an additional 6.9%.
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Source: 3dnews.ru
