Facebook parent Meta posts stronger-than-expected Q2 results, sending shares higher after hours

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc. reported stronger-than-expected results for the second quarter on Wednesday, sending shares sharply higher in after-hours trading. The Menlo Park, California-based company earned $13.47 billion, or $5.16 per share, in the April-June period. That’s up 73% from $7.8 billion, or $2.98 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose 22% to $39.07 billion from $32 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $4.72 per share on revenue of $38.26 billion, according to a poll by FactSet. “We had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement. The number of daily active users for Meta’s family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — was 3.27 billion for June, an increase of 7% from a year earlier. The company no longer breaks out user figures for Facebook as it had in the past. Meta said it expects its third-quarter revenue to land in the range of $38.5 billion to $41 billion. Analysts are expecting $39.1 billion. The company hasn’t given guidance for 2025 yet — it said it will do so during its fourth-quarter earnings call — but it expects infrastructure costs to be a “significant driver of expense growth” in the coming year. Like other big tech companies, Meta is investing heavily in building its artificial intelligence capacity, including in data centers, and expects “significant capital expenditures growth in 2025 as we invest to support our artificial intelligence research and product development efforts.” Meta is in a good position to grow “at a much faster pace than the competition in both the AI and ad spaces going forward,” said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com. “That’s because Zuckerberg’s company keeps showing signs that it is able to keep growing at the 20%+ per quarter level in a much more efficient way than other big tech peers, such as Alphabet and Microsoft, for example; which are not only struggling to keep revenue growth in the double digits, but also are progressively taking a bigger hit on the margins side,” he added. Monteiro added that Meta’s strategy of focusing its growth on younger users outside of the U.S. appears to be paying off, though the numbers “would have been even better” were it not for its Reality Labs segment dragging revenue lower. Meta’s stock rose $23.67, or 5%, to 498.50 in after-hours trading.