After Google, Tesla, and Microsoft among the "Big Seven" released unsatisfactory financial reports, social media giant Meta's second quarter financial report boosted the market.
On July 31st local time, Meta announced its Q2 fiscal year 2024 results as of June 30th, 2024. Q2 revenue was $39.071 billion, a 22% increase from the same period last year and higher than market expectations of $38.3 billion; Net profit increased by 73% year-on-year to 13.465 billion US dollars; Diluted earnings per share increased by 73% year-on-year to $5.16, exceeding market expectations of $4.72. The company's operating profit margin increased from 29% in the same period last year to 38%, unchanged from the previous month.
Meta expects its revenue to reach between $38.5 billion and $41 billion in the next fiscal quarter, with a median of $39.75 billion representing a 24% growth, higher than analysts' expectations of $39.1 billion.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "We have had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is expected to become the most widely used AI assistant globally by the end of the year. We have released our first cutting-edge open-source AI model, and our Ray Ban Meta AI glasses continue to receive positive feedback, with applications achieving good growth
Meta's Q2 performance. Source: Meta Financial Report
However, Meta also pointed out in its financial report that the company has raised its guidance range for capital expenditures in 2024, with the median increasing from $37.5 billion to $38.5 billion, meaning that capital expenditures in the second half of the year will be 50% higher than in the first half. In addition, it is expected that infrastructure costs will be the main driving factor for capital expenditure growth in 2025, as the company will recognize depreciation and operating costs related to expanding infrastructure.
Meta (Nasdaq: META) stock closed at $474.83 per share on July 31, with a total market value of $1.20 trillion and a post market increase of over 7% at one point. According to Wind data, Meta's stock price has risen by over 34% since the beginning of this year.
The efficiency of advertising business has been improved, and the daily active users of the application have reached 3.27 billion
From a business perspective, as the main component of revenue, advertising revenue from social media platforms performed outstandingly, reaching $38.329 billion in the second quarter, accounting for over 98% of total revenue. The number of advertisement displays increased by 10%, and the average advertising price increased by 10%.
During the post earnings conference call, Susan Li, Chief Financial Officer of Meta, stated that Meta has become more efficient in advertising and service delivery, and with the help of new tools, the return on advertising expenditure in the US market has increased by 22%.
Relying on advertising revenue, the Meta application series Family of Apps (FoA), including Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, achieved a revenue of $38.718 billion in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 22%, exceeding market expectations of $37.8 billion. Meta reported that its daily active users (DAP) in households reached 3.27 billion in June this year, a year-on-year increase of 7%. Threads has nearly 200 million monthly active users, while messaging app WhatsApp has over 100 million users in the United States this year.
On the other hand, Reality Labs, a department related to the metaverse and responsible for AR and VR businesses, still suffered a huge loss of $4.488 billion in the second quarter, higher than the $3.739 billion in the same period last year. Meta also stated that due to the company's ongoing product development efforts and further investment in expanding the ecosystem, the operating losses of the department will significantly increase year-on-year in 2024.
Zuckerberg: Better to start hoarding computing power resources before there is demand
During the conference call, Zuckerberg spent most of his time discussing AI, stating that 'the current important topic is naturally AI'.
Zuckerberg stated that AI advancements are driving user engagement growth on his social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, and helping advertisers find interested audiences. Over time, AI will provide personalized advertising for every user: "The importance of AI is that it can be used to improve almost all of our products
Zuckerberg also reiterated his vision for open-source AI models, stating that the company's latest Llama 3.1 open-source model is "as outstanding as any other generative AI model on the market," and the next version will be superior to any existing model.
Faced with questions from analysts regarding AI capital expenditures, Zuckerberg reiterated his determination. He admitted that he cannot predict when the capital expenditure required for the next generation of AI will stabilize, and the computing power required to train the next generation Llama 4 will be ten times that of Llama 3: "Considering the long delivery time of major infrastructure projects, I would rather take risks to enhance capabilities before there is demand, rather than waiting too late
On July 29th local time, at the 50th SIGGRAPH graphic conference held in Denver, USA, Nvidia CEO Renxun Huang and Zuckerberg had their first public Fireside Talk. Zuckerberg stated that AI basic research is accelerating, and based on current AI model technology, the industry still has five years of product innovation space. On the same day, Meta also announced the launch of a new tool called AI Studio, built on the company's latest large model Llama 3.1, allowing users to create, share, and design personalized AI chatbots.
On July 23rd, Meta released its latest open-source model Llama 3.1, which includes three parameter scales: 8B, 70B, and 405B. Meta stated that so far, the total download volume of all versions of the Llama series has exceeded 300 million times. Zuckerberg said that the emergence of Llama 3.1 "will be a turning point for the industry. He also pointed out that the view that "the United States can always lead China by 5-10 years in AI development" is unrealistic, and blocking China in the AI competition is a big mistake. "It is reasonable for the United States to maintain a lead of 6-8 months (goal)