Meta Platforms Q1 Earnings Highlights: Revenue And EPS Beat, Ads Delivered Rise 26%, AI Spending Update And More

Technology and social media giant Meta Platforms META reported first-quarter financial results after the market close Wednesday. Here are the key highlights.

What Happened: Meta Platforms reported first-quarter revenue of $28.64 billion, which was up 3% year-over-year. The revenue total beat a Street consensus estimate of $27.62 billion, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

The company reported earnings per share of $2.20, which beat a Street consensus estimate of $2.03.

Meta Platforms reported family daily active people of 3.02 billion for the first quarter, up 5% year-over-year. Family monthly active people totaled 3.81 billion for the first quarter, up 5% year-over-year.

Facebook daily active users were 2.04 billion in the first quarter, up 4% year-over-year. Facebook monthly active users amounted to 2.99 billion in the first quarter, up 2% year-over-year.

The company saw ad impressions delivered increase 26% year-over-year. The average price per ad was down 17% year-over-year in the first quarter.

In the first quarter, Meta Platforms repurchased $9.22 billion of its shares. A total of $41.73 billion remains on the share buyback authorization.

The company ended the first quarter with $37.44 billion in cash and cash equivalents.

Meta Platforms ended the quarter with 77,114 employees. A restructuring effort took place in 2022 to realign the business that included several rounds of layoffs.

"We had a good quarter and our community continues to grow. Our AI work is driving good results across our apps and business. 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 CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

Related Link: Trading Strategies For Meta Platforms Stock After Q1 Earnings

What’s Next: The company issued second-quarter revenue guidance of $29.5 billion to $32 billion, which is above Street estimates of $29.53 billion, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

For fiscal year 2023, the company expects expenses to be in the range of $86 billion to $90 billion, which includes $3 billion to $5 billion in restructuring costs.

Capital expenditures are expected to be $30 billion to $33 billion for the full fiscal year.

“This outlook reflects our ongoing build out of AI capacity to support ads, Feed and Reels, along with increased investment in capacity for our generative AI initiatives,” the company said.

META Price Action: Meta shares are up 9% to $228.13 in after-hours trading Wednesday at the time of writing.

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