Meta announces third-quarter 2024 financial results, with daily active users across the platform growing 5% to 3.29 billion, Threads monthly active users reaching 275 million, but the AR/VR division posted a loss of 680 billion yen

Meta has announced its financial results for the third quarter (July to September) of 2024. According to Meta, the number of daily active users in the same period increased 5% year-on-year to 3.29 billion, but fell short of analysts' initial estimate of 3.31 billion.

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https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2024/Meta-Reports-Third-Quarter-2024-Results/default.aspx

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On October 30, 2024 local time, Meta announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2024. Total sales for the same period increased 19% year-on-year to $40.59 billion (approximately 6.23 trillion yen), and net income increased 35% year-on-year to $15.7 billion (approximately 2.41 trillion yen). Meta has recorded its lowest year-on-year growth rate since the second quarter of 2023.

Meta also raised its capital expenditure outlook for fiscal 2024 from $37 billion to $40 billion to $38 billion to $40 billion. Meta expects capital expenditures to increase significantly in 2025 due to accelerating infrastructure costs. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, 'Meta's AI investments will continue to require full-scale infrastructure, and we intend to continue to invest heavily in that as well,' he said about the company's future outlook.

Zuckerberg cited Apple's investments in AI, including a multibillion-dollar investment in NVIDIA GPUs, as helping the company improve its online advertising business following its 2021 privacy update . Meta is upgrading and expanding its data centers to provide the technical infrastructure needed for its AI strategy.

Meta to deploy proprietary AI processor 'Artemis' in its data centers in the second half of 2024 - GIGAZINE

Meta's advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2024 is expected to increase 18.7% year-on-year to $39.9 billion (approximately 6.12 trillion yen), with advertising revenue accounting for 98.3% of the company's revenue for the same period. According to CEO Zuckerberg, more than 1 million advertisers are using Meta's generative AI ad tool to generate more than 15 million ads.

Meta's sales in the Asia-Pacific region grew 15% year-on-year, but the region appears to be the slowest growing region for Meta. In addition, sales in the Asia-Pacific region in the second quarter of 2024 grew 28% year-on-year, so the growth rate is slowing. The slowdown in growth is partly due to a decrease in digital advertising spending by Chinese online retailers such as Temu and SHEIN.

Meta's VR and AR division, Reality Labs, reported revenue of $270 million in the third quarter of 2024, up 29% from the same period last year, but an operating loss of $4.4 billion in the same period. Reality Labs has reportedly been losing $1 billion a month since June 2022.

Meta has recorded monthly losses of 160 billion yen in the VR sector since June 2022 - GIGAZINE

As of September 30, 2024, Meta's employee base increased 9% year-on-year to 72,404. Meta had implemented two large-scale workforce reductions in 2024.

Meta to cut staff for third time, lay off around 4,000 employees - GIGAZINE

Meta cuts jobs at Instagram, WhatsApp and Reality Labs divisions - GIGAZINE

Zuckerberg revealed that Meta AI now has over 500 million users, and he hopes it will be the 'most used' assistant by the end of 2024. Meta has updated its platform's AI to improve its feed and video recommendations, which Zuckerberg reported led to an 8% increase in the time users spent on Facebook and a 5% increase in the time they spent on Instagram.

In addition, Threads has approximately 275 million monthly users, and Zuckerberg said, 'The number of monthly users is increasing by more than 1 million per day.'