On Wednesday, January 29, in after-hours trading Meta’s shares demonstrated slight growth against the background of the fact that this technology giant published its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2024 and the whole of last year.
The mentioned results exceeded analysts’ preliminary expectations.
The technology giant’s revenue for the last quarter of 2024 was recorded at the $48.38 billion mark. This indicator showed an increase of 21% year-on-year. At the same time, analysts interviewed by LSEG predicted that Meta’s revenue for the mentioned period would be fixed at the $47.04 billion mark. In this case, reality has exceeded expectations.
The technology giant’s revenue for the whole of 2024 was $164.5 billion. This indicator increased by 22% year-on-year.
Earnings per share amounted to $8.02. The experts interviewed by LSEG were expecting that this figure would be $6.77.
Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said he expects the company to redefine relationships with governments in 2025. In this context, he noted that the administration of the President of the United States Donald Trump is proud of leading US firms, prioritizes American technologies, and will defend the country’s values and interests abroad. Mark Zuckerberg has expressed his optimism about the progress and innovation that this can unlock.
Meta’s net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $20.83 billion. This indicator increased by 49% year-on-year. The technology giant’s net income for the entire year 2024 was recorded at the $62.36 billion mark. This indicator showed a growth of 59% year-on-year.
Meta expects its revenue for the first quarter of 2025 to range from $39.5 billion to $41.8 billion. The average forecast of analysts surveyed by the media provided that the mentioned figure would be $41.73 billion.
The company’s chief financial officer, Susan Li, said that the Meta AI chatbot has more than 700 million monthly active users. Mark Zuckerberg expects the mentioned figure to reach 1 billion in the current year. According to him, once a service reaches that kind of scale, it usually develops a durable, long-term advantage.
Meta continues to be a proponent of open-source artificial intelligence models. Currently, the technology giant is pushing its family of Llama-branded large language models. The corresponding products are an open-source alternative to technologies from OpenAI and Google.
Mark Zuckerberg believes that over time open source will become a global standard. In this context, he noted that from the point of view of national advantage, it is important that it be a US standard.
Mark Zuckerberg also stated that Meta has completed training of a mini version of Llama 4. Also, according to him, training a bigger version of the large language model is making great progress.
Meta confirmed last week’s announcement of the technology giant’s plans to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion this year in capital expenditures to fuel its artificial intelligence strategy. It is worth noting that the company bets heavily on AI. This is a natural strategic priority since artificial intelligence is actually the main technology of modernity. AI is also the main element of the content of the current configuration of the global technology sector.
Mark Zuckerberg said that he continues to hold the view that large investments in the company’s artificial intelligence infrastructure will become a strategic advantage over time. According to him, it is too early to draw any generalizing conclusions on the relevant issue. Mark Zuckerberg stated that he would bet that the ability to build out that kind of infrastructure is going to be a major advantage for both the quality of the service and being able to serve the scale that Meta wants to.
On Wednesday, the company also released data showing that the number of active people on digital platforms owned by the technology giant totaled 3.35 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024. In the previous quarter, this figure was 3.29 billion. Wall Street predicted that in the last three months of 2024, the number of active people on Meta’s digital platforms would be 3.32 billion.
The technology giant’s costs and expenses for the fourth quarter of last year were recorded at $25.02 billion mark. This indicator is 5% higher than the figure for the same period in 2023. The company’s cost and expenses for the whole of 2024 amounted to $95.12 billion. This indicator grew by 8% year-on-year.
Susan Li stated that Meta did not provide a revenue outlook for 2025, but investments in the company’s core business will give it an opportunity to continue delivering strong revenue growth throughout the current year.
The firm’s Reality Labs unit, which develops virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, recorded an operating loss of $5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024. Sales in this case amounted to $1.1 billion.
Meta expects its total expenses in 2025 to range from $114 billion to $119 billion. The bulk of this spending will be related to infrastructure costs. The company plans to hire employees for infrastructure, monetization, Reality Labs, generative artificial intelligence, regulation, and compliance. As of the end of December, Meta’s headcount exceeded 74,000. This indicator showed an increase of 10% year-on-year.
As we have reported earlier, IBM Shares Increase on Earnings Beat.
