GoKawiilMeta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event, at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Sept. 25, 2024.
Meta shares plummeted almost 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after the company issued a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast and took a big hit to its cash pile.
Here's how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
Earnings per share : $6.18 vs. $7.22
: $6.18 vs. $7.22 Revenue: $60.80 billion vs. $60.17 billion
Meta said it expects revenue this quarter of between $61 billion and $64 billion, or $62.5 billion at the middle of the range. Analysts were expecting guidance of $63.15 billion, according to LSEG. The company said that the guidance "assumes foreign currency is an approximately 1% headwind to year-over-year total revenue growth, based on current exchange rates."
Daily active people, or DAP, came in at 3.6 billion, trailing Wall Street estimates of 3.61 billion, according to StreetAccount. DAP measures the number of users of Meta's family of apps.
For capital expenditures, Meta narrowed its guidance for the year to between $130 billion and $145 billion from a prior range of $125 billion to $145 billion. With Meta pouring money into artificial intelligence infrastructure, Meta's free cash flow dwindled to $784 million in the quarter from $8.55 billion a year earlier.
Meta shares are down 11% for the year as of Wednesday's close, while the Nasdaq is up about 5% over that stretch.
Investors are paying close attention to Meta's efforts to more directly monetize its various AI-related efforts. Earlier this month, Meta debuted the Muse Spark 1.1 model, which AI chief Alexandr Wang said represents the "strongest model for agentic and coding work yet" and at a cheaper price than offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic.
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