Key facts
- Meta's stock fell 9.5% in after-hours trading following its Q2 earnings report.
- The company's earnings per share missed Wall Street estimates.
- Revenue slightly surpassed analyst expectations, rising 27% to $59.36 billion.
- CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized AI's role in accelerating the core business and future products.
- Meta expects capital expenditures to be between $130-145 billion for the year.
Meta's stock experienced a significant decline, trading down 9.5% in after-hours trading, shortly after the company announced its second-quarter financial results. While revenue slightly exceeded Wall Street's expectations, rising 27% to $59.36 billion, the company's earnings per share fell short of estimates.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence on Meta's core business, including its popular apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Threads, as well as its advertising engine. He noted that AI is powering next-generation products and opening new enterprise opportunities. Advertising revenue, the company's primary income source, saw a 14% increase in ad impressions and a 12% rise in the average price per ad.
Investors are closely watching Meta's substantial investments in AI, which include data centers and large language models. CFO Susan Li projected that the company's capital expenditures for the year will be between $130-145 billion, a slight narrowing of the previous outlook. During the analyst call, Zuckerberg elaborated on Meta's strategy for acquiring AI compute capacity, its progress with the Superintelligence Lab, and the ongoing debate between open-source and closed-source AI models. He also emphasized the potential of personal AI agents as a massive future market.