Meta Joins The AI Spending Spree But Shields Itself With Strong Ad Revenue And Earnings Beat

On Wednesday, Meta Platforms META surpassed Wall Street estimates with its second quarter results, as well as raised its guidance for the current quarter. During Wednesday’s extended trading, Meta shares made a 7% jump.

Second Quarter Highlights

For the quarter ended on June 30th, revenue grew 22% YoY to $39.07 billion, exceeding LSEG’s estimate of $38.31 billion. This is the fourth consecutive quarter that Meta reported revenue growth that exceeds 20%. 

With higher average prices per ad and more ad impressions across its apps, advertising revenue grew 22% to $38.33 billion, showing Meta is continues to dominate the digital ad market, its core business. This growth rate is double compared to its biggest rival, Alphabet GOOGGOOGL, who last week reported Google ad revenue growth of 11% while its YouTube sales fell short of expectations.

Expenses amounted to $24.2 billion, including charge from its recent $1.4 billion agreement to settle a facial recognition data lawsuit by the state of Texas. Capital expenditures of $8.47 billion were below LSEG’s consensus estimate of $9.51 billion.

Operating income climbed 58% to $14.9 billion as operating margin expanded from last year’s comparable quarter when it amounted to 29% to 38%.

Net income jumped 73% to $13.47 billion with earnings of $5.16 a share surpassing LSEG’s consensus estimate of $4.73 per share.

Third Quarter Guidance

Meta expects current quarter revenue in the range between $38.5 billion and $41 billion.

AI-related developments 

Meta AI, which rivals offerings from Microsoft-backed MSFT OpenAI and Alphabet-owned Google is stated to be on track to become the most used AI assistant by the end of the year. But, monetizing this tool will take time. 

With its AI offerings, Meta also aims to make its core business, advertising, more effective, using these tools to improve ad performance and the overall user experience.

After recently unveiling its most capable open-source AI model yet, Llama 3.1  as part of its AI push, Zuckerberg revealed Meta is already working on Llama 4, which it ambitiously aims to become "the most advanced in the industry next year." This speed of development emphasizes  Meta’s determination to ensure that its technology is on par with  that of rivals like Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google.

Heavy AI infrastructure spending to avoid being late.

Like Google, Microsoft and other tech peers, Meta boosted spending to invest in AI infrastructure, raising concerns about whether these massive costs will pay off. In addition, Meta CFO Susan Li revealed Meta expects significant CapEx growth in 2025. But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shares the reasoning with Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, prefering to risk building capacity before it is needed, rather than risk being too late.

Meta’s financials continue to benefit from cost-cutting efforts that Meta kicked off in late 2022. But the highlight of the report was undoubtedly the AI spending spree. Although Meta also needs to prove its ambitious AI visions are worth the investment, like Google, Meta is delivering when it comes revenue growth and earnings beats, which is undoutebtedly easing investor concerns.

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