Facebook parent company Meta's first-quarter results surpassed Wall Street's modest expectations on both profit and revenue, sending its stock soaring in after-hours trading.
Meta reported that the monthly user base of its flagship platform — Facebook — inched close to 3 billion, and its revenue guidance for the current quarter was also above analyst estimates.
“Our AI work is driving good results across our apps and business,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We’re also becoming more efficient so we can build better products faster and put ourselves in a stronger position to deliver our long term vision.”
Meta Platforms Inc. said Wednesday it earned $5.71 billion, or $2.20 per share, in the January-March period. That's down 19% from $7.47 billion, or $2.72 per share, a year earlier. Results in the latest quarter were weighed down by restructuring charges.
Revenue climbed 3% to $28.65 billion from $27.91 billion.
Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $2.02 per share on revenue of $27.67 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.
Meta said it has “substantially completed” layoffs it first announced in 2022. It announced a second round of layoffs in March.
For the current quarter, Meta said it expects revenue in the range of $29.5 billion to $32 billion, above analysts' expectations of $29.45 billion.
“In this economic environment — and after the disaster that was 2022 — 3% year-over-year revenue growth is an accomplishment,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with Insider Intelligence. "Meta’s strong guidance for Q2 revenue is another indicator that the company may be starting to come out of the woods.”
But, she added, Meta still has a lot of work to do — including finish the rebuilding of its ad targeting capabilities “after the Apple privacy debacle,” make a strong case to advertisers for “why they should invest in Reels instead of TikTok, and keep restless creators in the fold.”
Apple made privacy changes to its phones that make it harder for companies like Meta to track people for advertising purposes, which hurt the company's revenue — which mostly comes from ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Meta is “starting to find its way again after being negatively impacted by Apple privacy changes, TikTok competition, Reels headwinds, heavy hiring and expense growth,” said Dan Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Company.
Meta said 3.02 billion people logged in to at least one of its apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger — every day in March. Facebook, still its biggest platform and biggest source of ad revenue, had 2.04 billion daily users and 2.99 billion monthly users, an increase of 4% and 2% year-over-year.
Shares of the Menlo Park, California-based company rose nearly 12% to $234.20 in after-hours trading.
An internet outage on Monday morning highlights the reliance on Amazon's cloud services. This incident reveals vulnerabilities in the concentrated system. Cloud computing allows companies to rent Amazon's infrastructure instead of building their own. Amazon leads the market, followed by Google and Microsoft. The outage originated in Northern Virginia, the biggest and oldest cloud hub in the U.S. This region handles significantly more data than other hubs. Despite the idea of spreading workloads, many rely on this single hub. The demand for computing power, especially for AI, is driving a construction boom for data centers.
Ashley Fieglein Johnson, CFO & President at Planet, joins us to share the story behind the Owl launch—and how strategy, tech, and vision are fueling liftoff.
OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will soon engage in "erotica for verified adults." CEO Sam Altman says the company aims to allow more user freedom for adults while setting limits for teens. OpenAI isn't the first to explore sexualized AI, but previous attempts have faced legal and societal challenges. Altman believes OpenAI isn't the "moral police" and wants to differentiate content similar to how Hollywood differentiates R-rated movies. This move could help OpenAI, which is losing money, turn a profit. However, experts express concerns about the impact on real-world relationships and the potential for misuse.
Ten philanthropic foundations are committing $500 million across the next five years to place human interests at the forefront of artificial intelligence's rapid integration into daily life.
Jesse Pickard, CEO of The Mind Company, shares how Elevate and Balance are redefining mental fitness with science-backed tools for brainpower and wellness.
Apple has taken down an app that uses crowdsourcing to flag sightings of U.S. immigration agents after coming under pressure from the Trump administration.
Former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers learned all about technology’s volatile highs and lows as a veteran of the internet’s early boom days during the late 1990s and the ensuing meltdown that followed the mania. And now he is seeing potential signs of the cycle repeating with another transformative technology in artificial intelligence. Chambers is trying take some of the lessons he learned while riding a wave that turned Cisco into the world's most valuable company in 2000 before a crash hammered its stock price and apply them as an investor in AI startups. He recently discussed AI's promise and perils during an interview with The Associated Press.
