Meta (META) will kick off Big Tech’s earnings season when it reports its third quarter results after the bell on Wednesday.
For the third quarter, Meta is expected to post earnings per share of $3.56 on revenue of $63.3 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates. That’s up from the $1.05 and $51.2 billion the company reported in Q3 last year.
Capital expenditures, however, are projected to increase 117% year over year to $41 billion. Meta’s Reality Labs segment is expected to see an operating loss of $5.2 billion.
The company’s earnings come as AI investors waver between hope and concern over CoreWeave’s (CRWV) debt load.
Adding to the unease is a report from Gartner last week stating that AI revenue infrastructure firms are set to spend upwards of $8.5 trillion through 2030, but that consumer and enterprise AI revenue will total just $3.6 trillion, potentially leaving “more than $4 trillion in asset value exposed to write-down risk through 2032.”
Meta stock is down more than 3% over the last year, as Wall Street has sought more clarity on how the company plans to monetize its prodigious spending.
But the social media giant has also had several wins in recent weeks. Its Muse AI agent reached 10 million downloads just 40 days after its US launch, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower announced Tuesday.
That’s faster than OpenAI’s (OPAI.PVT) ChatGPT and Anthropic’s (ANTH.PVT) Claude, which hit the mark in 123 days and 673 days, respectively.
Meta also debuted its frontier-class Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full AI models, proving it can compete with the likes of Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
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And last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted a number of new hardware products at the company’s Meta Connect conference, including the latest Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the audio-only Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, and the upcoming $1,299 Meta VR Glasses.
“Recent AI launches have strengthened confidence in the company’s AI execution, and we see Meta with the least risk of AI disruption to its core business in our coverage,” BofA Global Research analyst Justin Post wrote in a note to investors ahead of the company’s earnings.
Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
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