2024

April

Meta

Meta (META) shares dropped 15% in after-hours trading after a weak outlook for Q2 revenue and plans to “aggressively” ramp up spending in artificial intelligence (AI) this year — while its metaverse division is expected to continue to run at a loss.
The tech giant’s financial chief, Susan Li, said in its April 24 Q1&nbsp;<a href="https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2024/q1/Meta-03-31-2024-Exhibit-99-1_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">results</a> that its revenue guidance for the Q2 falls between $36.5 billion and $39 billion — below reported Wall Street expectations of $38.3 billion.
Li expects expenses to rise to between $96 billion to $99 billion — up from $94 billion to $99 billion due to “higher infrastructure and legal costs.”
She also bumped full-year 2024 capital expenditures to a top end of $40 billion from its prior $37 billion as it would “invest aggressively to support our ambitious AI research and product development.”
Meta posted Q1 revenues of $36.46 billion — a 27% year-on-year (YOY) jump that surpassed Wall Street analysts’ Zacks <a href="https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/2261743/meta-platforms-meta-tops-q1-earnings-and-revenue-estimates#:~:text=Meta%20Platforms%20(%20META%20Quick%20Quote,adjusted%20for%20non%2Drecurring%20items." target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">estimate</a> of $36.28 billion by 0.48%.
Its earnings per share doubled YOY to $4.71, beating estimates of $4.32 per share.
Its <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/meta-metaverse-lab-lost-40-b-since-facebook-changed-its-name-in-2021">metaverse building</a> Reality Labs lost $3.85 billion in Q1 — down from the nearly $4 billion it lost in Q1 2023; Meta expects these losses to increase YOY as it bankrolls the division’s product development.
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 <img src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-04/4b8d7cd4-37a3-49b9-aec9-612c3d8c8431.png" alt="" title="">
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 Highlighted are Reality Labs’ operating losses, which saw a quarter-on-quarter drop of 17.2%. Source: Meta
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“An increasing amount of our Reality Labs work is going toward serving our AI efforts,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg on an earnings call.
He expected a “multi-year investment cycle” before Meta “fully scaled” its <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-meta-wearables-read-brain-signals-coming-soon">AI businesses</a>.
Related: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/uk-watchdog-worries-tech-giants-ai-market-control">UK watchdog worries about tech giants’ AI market control</a>
“Building the leading AI will also be a larger undertaking than the other experiences we’ve added to our apps and this is likely going to take several years,” Zuckerberg said. 
Meta shares slid 15.4% on April 24 to $417.22 following it closing the day down 0.5% at $493.50, <a href="https://www.google.com/finance/quote/META:NASDAQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">according</a> to Google Finance.
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 Meta slid to a low of $402.98 before slightly recovering. Source: Google Finance
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Meta is, however, still up 42.5% year-to-date after hitting an all-time high of $527.34 earlier this month on April 5.
On April 18, Meta launched its <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/meta-llama3-llm-ai-artificial-intelligence-gpt-and-claude">Llama 3 AI model</a>, which it rolled out in its Meta AI chatbot, available across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
The Meta AI chatbot is reported to have posted bizarre interactions, <a href="https://twitter.com/korolova/status/1780450925028548821" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">telling</a> a Facebook group for New York mothers that it has a child.
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 Meta AI claiming it has a child. Source: Aleksandra Korolova/X
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Meta, however, claimed human evaluators ranked Llama 3 higher than other models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3.5.
Magazine:&nbsp;<a href="https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/chatgpt-predict-crypto-prices-ai-humane-ai-pin-slammed-knowledge-collapse-ai-eye/">How to get better crypto predictions from ChatGPT, Humane AI pin slammed: AI Eye</a>

Meta drops 15% on weak outlook and high AI and metaverse spending

Cointelegraph

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