Meta’s revenue rises to $40.6bn in Q3 2024

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, stated that its revenue rose 19 per cent year-on-year to reach $40.6 billion in the third quarter for the period ended September 30, 2024.

According to its financial result released on Wednesday, the company’s revenue was driven by Artificial Intelligence capabilities, and increase in ad rates, marking one of the company’s strongest performances this year.

The company’s revenue growth, up from $34.1bn a year earlier, benefited from a 7 per cent increase in ad impressions and an 11 per cent rise in the average price per ad.

“We had a good quarter driven by AI progress across our apps and business,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said, highlighting growth in products like Meta AI, Llama, and AI-powered smart glasses.

The company said its operating income climbed to $17.4bn from $13.7bn in the previous year, while the operating margin improved to 43 per cent, reflecting Meta’s strategic focus on integrating AI across its products and services.

It also reported net income of $15.7bn, up from $11.6bn in Q3 2023, with diluted earnings per share rising to $6.03 from $4.39.

Meta’s family of daily active users reached 3.29 billion in September, marking a 5 per cent increase from the prior year as users continued to engage with its apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Meta’s operating costs grew 14 per cent year-over-year to $23.2bn, in part due to increased investment in AI technology.

Capital expenditures, including payments on finance leases, totalled $9.2bn as the company ramped up spending on infrastructure to support its AI expansion, the report stated.

The company’s workforce expanded to 72,404 employees as of September 30, a 9 per cent increase year-over-year, reflecting Meta’s continued hiring in critical areas.

Meta’s Q3 results highlight the firm’s ongoing AI investments as it looks to maintain competitive momentum in the tech sector, bolstered by a growing user base and a surge in ad revenue.

Commenting on the outlook, the company stated in the report that it expects fourth-quarter 2024 total revenue to be in the range of $45-48bn.

“Our guidance assumes foreign currency is approximately neutral to year-over-year total revenue growth, based on current exchange rates. We expect full-year 2024 total expenses to be in the range of $96-98bn, updated from our prior range of $96-99bn.

“For Reality Labs, we continue to expect 2024 operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts and investments to further scale our ecosystem. We anticipate our full-year 2024 capital expenditures will be in the range of $38-40bn, updated from our prior range of $37-40bn. We continue to expect significant capital expenditure growth in 2025.

“Given this, along with the back-end weighted nature of our 2024 capital expenditures, we expect a significant acceleration in infrastructure expense growth next year as we recognise higher growth in depreciation and operating expenses of our expanded infrastructure fleet,” the multinational stated.