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Meta rakes in $39bn revenue, with 3.27bn users

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb news editor.
Johannesburg, 01 Aug 2024
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO.

Social media giant Meta Platforms has posted revenue of $39 billion in the second quarter of 2024.

The company yesterday announced its financial results for the quarter ended 30 June, revealing revenue saw an increase of 22% year-over-year.

Meta owns and operates popular social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, among other products and services.

Daily active people using its family of apps averaged 3.27 billion for June 2024 − an increase of 7% year-over-year.

Advertising impressions delivered across Meta’s family of apps increased by 10% year-over-year, while average price per ad increased by 10% year-over-year.

Total costs and expenses were $24.22 billion, an increase of 7% year-over-year, with capital expenditure, including principal payments on finance leases, at $8.47 billion.

The social media company reveals its headcount was 70 799 as of 30 June, a decrease of 1% year-over-year.

“We had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI [artificial intelligence] assistant in the world by the end of the year,” says Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO.

“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.”

“We expect third quarter 2024 total revenue to be in the range of $38.5 billion to $41 billion. Our guidance assumes foreign currency is a 2% headwind to year-over-year total revenue growth, based on current exchange rates,” says Meta chief financial officer Susan Li.

“We expect full-year 2024 total expenses to be in the range of $96 billion to $99 billion, unchanged from our prior outlook. For Reality Labs, we continue to expect 2024 operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts and investments to further scale our ecosystem.”

Reality Labs is a division of Meta focused on developing augmented reality, virtual reality and other advanced technologies. It plays a key role in Meta’s vision of building the metaverse, a collective virtual shared space that merges physical and digital realities.

Li adds: “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 recognise depreciation and operating costs associated with our expanded infrastructure footprint.”

The company expects its full-year 2024 capital expenditure will be in the range of $37 billion to $40 billion, updated from its prior range of $35 billion to $40 billion.

“While we continue to refine our plans for next year, we currently expect significant capital expenditure growth in 2025, as we invest to support our artificial intelligence research and product development efforts,” Li notes.

“In addition, we continue to monitor an active regulatory landscape, including the increasing legal and regulatory headwinds in the EU and the US that could significantly impact our business and our financial results.”

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