Facebook parent company Meta (META) will report its fiscal third quarter earnings after the closing bell on Wednesday. The social media giant has quickly become an artificial intelligence power in its own right, up there with the likes of Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN), and investors are on board for the ride.
Meta stock has shot up 66% year to date and 26% over the last three months. For comparison, Amazon shares are up 25% over the last three months, while Google shares are up 21%. Microsoft’s stock price, meanwhile, is up 15% during the same time period.
For the third quarter, Wall Street is expecting Meta to report earnings per share (EPS) of $5.25 on revenue of $40.2 billion, according to analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company saw earnings per share of $4.50 on revenue of $34.1 billion in the same quarter last year.
Advertising revenue is expected to come in at $39.7 billion versus $33.6 billion during the third quarter of 2023. Meta’s Reality Labs segment, which includes sales of its Quest augmented reality line of headsets, is expected to generate $312 million, up from $210 million.
Meta’s AI strategy includes rolling out its Llama family of models across its consumer offerings and advertiser products. It’s also offering the platform as open-source software. To that end, Meta reported that organizations ranging from Accenture (ACN) and DoorDash (DASH) to Goldman Sachs (GS) are using Llama to develop their own AI software.
Meta’s earnings follow a report by The Information that the company is working on its own search functionality for its Meta AI service that will allow users to ask questions and get answers about current events. The goal is to ensure Meta will no longer have to rely on Google’s or Microsoft’s search engines to answer certain user queries.
The company is also coming off of a successful Meta Connect conference, during which it debuted a working prototype of its Orion augmented reality glasses. The device, which is still in early development, is meant to serve as a pair of glasses that allow you to speak with other users via holograms projected onto the real world.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company also talked up the success of Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which are growing in popularity, and debuted its Quest 3S entry-level augmented reality headset.
But all of that AI and hardware development costs some serious cash. In Q3, Meta is expected to report capital expenditures of $11 billion, a dramatic increase from the $6.76 billion the company spent in Q3 last year. And the spending isn’t expected to stop anytime soon. Wall Street is anticipating capital expenditures to top $12 billion in Q4.
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