Meta Q4 earnings report 2024

Meta shares were slightly up after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat on the top and bottom.

Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: $8.02 vs. $6.77
• Revenue: $48.39 billion vs. $47.04 billion

Sales in the fourth quarter jumped 21% year over year while net income grew 49% to $20.8 billion from $14 billion a year earlier.

On a call with analysts, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained some of the rationale for the company’s recent efforts to improve its relationship with President Donald Trump and the current White House administration.

“We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad, and I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock,” Zuckerberg said. “So this is going to be a big year.”

Meta said its first-quarter revenue would be in the range of $39.5 billion to $41.8 billion. The midpoint of that figure trailed analysts’ expectations of first-quarter revenue of $41.73 billion.

The company said that daily active people came in at 3.35 billion in the quarter, up from 3.29 billion the previous quarter. Wall Street was projecting 3.32 billion for the fourth quarter.

Meta said that its first quarter costs and expenses were $25.02 billion, representing a more than 5% increase from the prior year.

Meta reiterated last Friday’s announcement that it would invest between $60 billion and $65 billion in capital expenditures in 2025 to fuel its AI strategy.

Meta did not provide a revenue outlook for 2025, but investments in the company’s core business “will give us an opportunity to continue delivering strong revenue growth throughout 2025,” finance chief Susan Li said in a statement.

The company expects its total expenses for 2025 to come in between $114 billion to $119 billion, with the bulk of the spending related to its infrastructure costs, Meta said. The company plans to hire workers for infrastructure, monetization, Reality Labs, generative artificial intelligence, regulation and compliance.  

Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which develops virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, logged an operating loss of $5 billion in the fourth quarter while generating $1.1 billion in sales.

The company’s headcount grew to more than 74,000 at the end of December, up 10% year over year.

Meta chief financial officer Susan Li told analysts during the earnings call that the company’s digital assistant Meta AI now has 700 million monthly active users. That’s up from December when the company said Meta AI had 600 million MAU.

Zuckerberg said he expects an AI chatbot will reach more than 1 billion users in 2025, and Meta AI is already used more than any other assistant, he said.”Once a service reaches that kind of scale, it usually develops a durable, long term advantage,” Zuckerberg told analysts on Wednesday.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.