Table of Contents

a. Key Points

  • Margins were pressured by one-time expenses.

  • AI continues to support strong healthy business trends.

  • Daily active users returned to sequential growth.

  • 28% revenue growth at massive scale.

b. Demand

  • Beat revenue estimate by 0.8% & beat guidance by 2.2%. Foreign exchange boosted revenue growth by 1 point instead of 2 points of help assumed in Meta’s guidance from last quarter.

    • Asia Pacific revenue missed estimates by 11%. U.S. + Canada (UCAN) revenue beat estimates by 4%. Europe missed by 3%. Rest of World beat by 4.4%.

    • Family of Apps (FOA) revenue beat estimates by 0.9%; reality labs revenue met estimates.

    • Y/Y growth slowed by 5 points compared to last quarter, but the Y/Y growth comp also got 6 points more difficult compared to last quarter, marking a modest acceleration on a two-year stacked basis.

  • Family daily active people (DAP) met estimates. Good to see this resume sequential growth following the global war-related decline.

    • Threads crossed 500 million monthly actives in less time than it took X or any other conversation app.

    • Instagram crossed 2 billion daily active users.

    • WhatsApp crossed 30 million messages per second for the first time ever during the World Cup final.

    • Having built-in distribution to 3.6 billion people makes scaling distribution for everything else Meta does so much easier.

  • 14% Y/Y ad impression growth missed 14.6% estimates.

  • 12% Y/Y price per ad growth beat 11.7% estimates.

  • WhatsApp paid messaging and subscriptions carried other business above $1B in quarterly revenue for the first time.

c. Profits & Margins

  • Missed EBIT estimates by 12.5%. This includes $3.6B in total legal and severance fees (May layoffs). EBIT would have been 4% ahead of estimates excluding these one-off items.

    • These costs led to 55% Y/Y operating expense growth. Excluding the two items, cost growth would have been about 41% Y/Y. 3rd-party AI token costs, AI talent and infrastructure depreciation were the other main sources of cost growth.

    • Headcount fell by 3% Q/Q, which reflects part of its recent layoffs.

    • EBIT rose 9% Y/Y ex-legal and severance charges.

  • Missed $7.22 EPS estimate by $1.04. This was tied to the same costs as noted above.

  • Beat -$1.2B FCF estimates by about $2B. This was likely cost recognition timing-related, although that wasn't mentioned on the call.

    • CapEx rose by 83% Y/Y to $31.1B.

d. Balance Sheet

  • $90B in cash & equivalents.

  • $30B in investments.

  • $83B in total debt.

  • Diluted share count slightly fell Y/Y. Basic share count rose by 1% Y/Y.

e. Guidance & Valuation

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