This article was originally published in
German
and has been automatically translated.
Meta Platforms records significant leaps in turnover and profits. Although the number of daily active users across all platforms is only increasing moderately, the Group is playing out more advertising, which has also been sold at a higher price. Meta uses this to finance the servers required for artificial intelligence (AI) and the Metaverse, which consumes almost 1.5 billion US dollars per month. As a result of exceeding expectations and a positive outlook, the share price jumped sharply.
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Analysts had expected revenue of 38.3 billion dollars for the second quarter of 2024, but the Facebook Group increased this to 39.1 billion dollars. This is 22 percent more than in the same period last year, when Meta was also able to sell a lot more advertising. As costs have risen by just 7 percent in the last three months, Meta Platforms has increased its operating profit by 58 percent year-on-year to 14.85 billion dollars. Net profit grew even more strongly in the same period, namely by 73 percent to 13.5 billion dollars.
More users, slightly fewer employees
In the past, Meta Platforms listed daily and monthly active users of the Facebook and Messenger apps, but now only lists the total number of daily active users of all platforms combined. This figure has risen by 7 percent year-on-year to 3.27 million daily users. At the same time, the Group has further reduced the number of employees, although there have been no major waves of redundancies recently. In June, it was reported that there would be restructuring and redundancies at Reality Labs, but a “relatively small number of jobs” were to be cut. Meta now has 70,799 employees, one percent fewer than last year.
Alongside employees, Reality Labs is one of the biggest cost factors at Meta Platforms. This is where the Metaverse and virtual reality products are developed, both hardware and software. It is one of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s hobbyhorses, but only generated a turnover of 389 million dollars in the last quarter – with an operating loss of 4.49 billion dollars.
Outlook boosts the share price
Another major cost factor is Meta’s server infrastructure. In addition to operating the platforms for billions of users, there are now AI functions that require computing time. The Group does not provide any figures, but infrastructure costs will continue to rise next year and represent a significant cost driver when the servers are modernized and expanded. There will also be investments in AI development and research.
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