Meta Platforms, the Silicon Valley parent company of social media sites Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, the messaging app WhatsApp, and more, releases its earnings quarterly.
CEO and chairman Mark Zuckerberg plays a leading role on these calls to report Meta’s status to its shareholders.
Here’s a breakdown of Meta’s recent earnings.
Meta Q4 earnings 2024
Meta reported its fourth-quarter earnings on January 29 after the closing bell. The social media company crushed Wall Street’s expectations.
Meta tried to reassure investors about how much it’s spending on artificial intelligence and about possible competition from Chinese AI company DeepSeek.
The Facebook parent reported revenue for the period of $48.39 billion, beating the consensus analyst estimate of $46.98 billion.
While its first-quarter sales forecast came in below estimates, investors seemed more concerned about other matters.
During Meta’s earnings conference call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg fielded questions from analysts on the company’s recent content moderation changes, its big spending plans for 2025, TikTok, and more.
He teased Llama 4 news and said he was “optimistic” about “progress and innovation” under Donald Trump’s government. Zuckerberg also responded to a question about DeepSeek, saying it was important to have a domestic firm set the standard on open-source AI “for our own national advantage.”
4th Quarter results
- Earnings per share: $8.02 vs. estimate of $6.78
- Revenue: $48.39 billion vs. estimate of $46.98 billion
- Operating margin: 48% vs. estimate of 42.6%
Meta Q3 earnings 2024
Meta reported its third-quarter earnings on October 30 after the market close. The company made it clear it would not be slowing down on its spending while building out its AI infrastructure this year — and expects those costs to increase in 2025.
“We had a good quarter driven by AI progress across our apps and business,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. “We also have strong momentum with Meta AI, Llama adoption, and AI-powered glasses.”
The company’s revenue for the quarter was $40.59 billion, ahead of the expected $40.25 billion. Earnings per share were in at $6.06, above the expected $5.25.
In its core business of advertising, Meta said its average price per ad had increased 11% year over year.
However, the company missed expectations for user growth. It said daily active users grew 5% year over year to 3.29 billion. That was lower than expectations of 3.31 billion daily users.
Shares dipped more than 3% following Meta’s earnings call with analysts, during which Zuckerberg talked through the company’s AI investment strategy and said that “this might be the most dynamic moment I’ve seen in our industry.”
The company’s big bet on AI, which includes both training its own AI models and launching consumer products across its platforms powered by them, continued to drive up its costs.
3rd Quarter results
- Earnings per share: $6.03 vs. estimate of $5.25
- Revenue: $40.59 billion vs. estimate of $40.25 billion
- Operating margin: 43% vs. estimate of 39.6%
Meta Q2 earnings 2024
Meta reported second-quarter earnings on July 31 after the market close, and it was another win for Mark Zuckerberg.
The Facebook parent’s revenue and earnings-per-share beat consensus analyst estimates, driven by better-than-expected advertising sales.
Like other tech giants, Meta has been heavily investing in generative AI with little to show for it so far, but CEO Zuckerberg defended its spending plans in the earnings call.
“Before we’re really talking about monetization of any of those things by themselves, I don’t think anyone should be surprised I would say that would be years,” he said, noting that “the early signals on this are good.”
Zuckerberg also said in the earnings release that the company’s chatbot, Meta AI, is on pace to become the most widely used in the world by the end of 2024.
Meta’s stock rose more than 6% in after-hours trading shortly after the results.
2nd Quarter Results
- Earnings per share: $5.16 vs. estimate of $4.72
- Revenue: $39.07 billion, vs. estimate of $38.34 billion
- Operating margin: 38% vs. estimate of 37.7%
Meta Q1 earnings 2024
Meta reported first-quarter earnings on April 24 after the closing bell.
The company reported revenue and earnings-per-share that beat consensus analyst estimates. But shares slid after Meta gave a range for second-quarter sales that was on the light side of forecasts and said it would spend more than it expected this year.
The report is Meta’s first without monthly- and daily-average-user numbers specifically broken out for Facebook. The company instead reported overall “Family of Apps” results that also included Instagram and WhatsApp. The combined group saw $36 billion of revenue, beating the consensus estimate of $35.5 billion.
Meta’s stock fell as much as 17% in after-hours trading as investors assessed the results.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s main focus on the investor call was Meta’s plans to invest more significantly in AI. He also hyped up the company’s recent partnership with Ray-Ban.
1st Quarter Results
- Earnings per share: $4.71 vs. estimate of $4.30
- Revenue: $36.46 billion, +27% y/y, estimate $36.12 billion
- Operating margin: 38% vs. 25% y/y, estimate 37.2%
Meta earnings history
Meta’s earnings are a chance for investors to hear from Mark Zuckerberg himself. The founder and CEO tends to sprinkle in interesting snippets during earnings calls and has a front-row seat to the growing AI boom.
Meta has shifted its focus recently from the Metaverse to AI-based large language models. Meta’s AI offering, Llama, is unique in that it is open-sourced, similar to China’s DeepSeek. The company has also talked up the adoption of AI technologies into its ad network, which has shown solid results so far.
An ongoing anti-trust lawsuit from the government has recently weighed on Meta. The lawsuit alleges that Meta illegally purchased Instagram and WhatsApp to crush the competition and maintain a monopoly in the social networking industry.
Zuckerberg himself has reportedly lobbied the Trump administration to ditch the lawsuit.
If Meta proves unsuccessful in fighting the anti-trust lawsuit, it could lead to a break up of some aspects of its business.
Meta’s next earnings report is scheduled for April 30 after the market close.
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