Meta Platforms Inc on Wednesday reported quarterly profits that were well above expectations, brushing aside market worries that its heavy investments in cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) would hamper growth.
The company — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — reported a US$16.6 billion profit in the first three months of the year on revenue of US$42.3 billion, with business spending on ads remaining strong.
“We’ve had a strong start to an important year, our community continues to grow and our business is performing very well,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
Photo: AFP
“We’re making good progress on AI glasses and Meta AI, which now has almost 1 billion monthly actives,” he said.
Meta this week unveiled its first stand-alone AI assistant app, challenging ChatGPT by giving users a direct path to its generative AI models.
The company is putting AI to work throughout its platforms, from creating and targeting ads to recommending content for users, Zuckerberg said.
The solid performance comes as Meta defends its group of apps in a US antitrust case that could end with the tech firm ordered to spin off messaging service WhatsApp and photo-sharing platform Instagram.
About 3.43 billion people use apps in the Meta family every day, the company said.
Zuckerberg has denied in court that his company bought Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralize competitive threats, as alleged by the US Federal Trade Commission.
The earnings also come in the wake of significant shifts in Meta’s content policies that are apparently intended to endear the company to US President Donald Trump, including the termination of its US fact-checking operation on Facebook.
“Meta’s robust earnings show that the company’s advertising business remained healthy in Q1, proof that the controversial ending of its fact-checking program hasn’t done much to deter advertisers,” Emarketer analyst Minda Smiley said.
“But investors and onlookers alike will be much more concerned with what’s to come in Q2 and beyond, considering the wildly different economic environment the company now operates in because of Trump’s tariffs,” she said.
Analysts are keen to see whether the hefty US tariffs would prompt businesses to cut their online advertising budgets, thereby weakening Meta’s main source of revenue.
Meta has laid out plans for massive infrastructure investments, with expected capital expenditures of US$64 billion to US$72 billion for this year, primarily supporting AI initiatives.
“The pace of progress across the industry and the opportunities ahead for us are staggering,” Zuckerberg said on an earnings call.
“We are accelerating some of our efforts to bring capacity online more quickly this year, as well as some longer-term projects, and that has increased our planned investment for this year,” he said.
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said second-quarter revenue is expected to surpass the first quarter, which rose 30 percent year-on-year to NT$118.92 billion (US$3.71 billion). Revenue this quarter is likely to grow, as US clients have front-loaded orders ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese goods, Delta chairman Ping Cheng (鄭平) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, referring to the 90-day pause in tariff implementation Trump announced on April 9. While situations in the third and fourth quarters remain unclear, “We will not halt our long-term deployments and do not plan to
TikTok abounds with viral videos accusing prestigious brands of secretly manufacturing luxury goods in China so they can be sold at cut prices. However, while these “revelations” are spurious, behind them lurks a well-oiled machine for selling counterfeit goods that is making the most of the confusion surrounding trade tariffs. Chinese content creators who portray themselves as workers or subcontractors in the luxury goods business claim that Beijing has lifted confidentiality clauses on local subcontractors as a way to respond to the huge hike in customs duties imposed on China by US President Donald Trump. They say this Chinese decision, of which Agence
RSS