Meta Platforms Inc on Wednesday reported that its quarterly profit more than doubled from last year as it looks ahead at a volatile advertising market and lawsuits accusing it of profiting from “children’s pain.”
The tech giant said it made a profit of US$11.6 billion as ad revenue climbed 23 percent to US$34 billion compared with the same period a year earlier.
“We had a good quarter for our community and business,” Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said.
Photo: AFP
The number of people using Facebook monthly rose slightly to 3.05 billion in a year-on-year comparison, while monthly active users of Meta’s “family” of apps was 3.96 billion, a 7 percent increase from the same quarter last year, the company reported.
Meta said it had trimmed costs, with layoffs and other belt-tightening measures started last year providing “greater efficiency.”
Meta chief financial officer Susan Li said during an earnings call that Meta is seeing “volatility” in an ad market that started to soften when the most recent conflict between Israel and Hamas began.
“It’s hard for us to attribute demand softness directly to any specific geopolitical event,” Li said. “We have seen broader demand softness follow other regional conflicts in the past, such as in the Ukraine war, so this is something that we’re continuing to monitor.”
Dozens of US states this week accused Meta of profiting from “children’s pain,” damaging their mental health and misleading people about the safety of its platforms.
“In seeking to maximize its financial gains, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its social media platforms,” a joint lawsuit filed in federal court in California says.
Meanwhile, the EU is seeking details on measures Meta has taken to stop the spread of “illegal content and disinformation” in light of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The tech giant is putting artificial intelligence (AI) into digital assistants and smart glasses as it seeks to gain lost ground in the AI race.
Yet Meta has taken a more cautious approach than its rivals Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google to push out AI products, prioritizing small steps and making its in-house models available to developers and researchers.
Meta shares, which closed the formal trading day down, fell more than 3 percent further in after-hours trading to US$289.50 per share on Wednesday.
Shares in Microsoft closed 3.1 percent higher after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the summer than analysts expected.
However, Google parent Alphabet Inc fell 9.6 percent as its Google Cloud business missed consensus revenue expectations on slowing growth, casting a pall on results that otherwise beat earnings expectations overall.
Semiconductor shares in China surged yesterday after Reuters reported the US had ordered chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers, which investors believe could accelerate Beijing’s self-reliance efforts. TSMC yesterday started to suspend shipments of certain sophisticated chips to some Chinese clients after receiving a letter from the US Department of Commerce imposing export restrictions on those products, Reuters reported on Sunday, citing an unnamed source. The US imposed export restrictions on TSMC’s 7-nanometer or more advanced designs, Reuters reported. Investors figured that would encourage authorities to support China’s industry and bought shares
FLEXIBLE: Taiwan can develop its own ground station equipment, and has highly competitive manufacturers and suppliers with diversified production, the MOEA said The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday disputed reports that suppliers to US-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) had been asked to move production out of Taiwan. Reuters had reported on Tuesday last week that Elon Musk-owned SpaceX had asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan given geopolitical risks and that at least one Taiwanese supplier had been pushed to relocate production to Vietnam. SpaceX’s requests place a renewed focus on the contentious relationship Musk has had with Taiwan, especially after he said last year that Taiwan is an “integral part” of China, sparking sharp criticism from Taiwanese authorities. The ministry said
US President Joe Biden’s administration is racing to complete CHIPS and Science Act agreements with companies such as Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co, aiming to shore up one of its signature initiatives before US president-elect Donald Trump enters the White House. The US Department of Commerce has allocated more than 90 percent of the US$39 billion in grants under the act, a landmark law enacted in 2022 designed to rebuild the domestic chip industry. However, the agency has only announced one binding agreement so far. The next two months would prove critical for more than 20 companies still in the process
CHANGING JAPAN: Nvidia-powered AI services over cellular networks ‘will result in an artificial intelligence grid that runs across Japan,’ Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said Softbank Group Corp would be the first to build a supercomputer with chips using Nvidia Corp’s new Blackwell design, a demonstration of the Japanese company’s ambitions to catch up on artificial intelligence (AI). The group’s telecom unit, Softbank Corp, plans to build Japan’s most powerful AI supercomputer to support local services, it said. That computer would be based on Nvidia’s DGX B200 product, which combines computer processors with so-called AI accelerator chips. A follow-up effort will feature Grace Blackwell, a more advanced version, the company said. The announcement indicates that Softbank Group, which until early 2019 owned 4.9 percent of Nvidia, has secured a
RSS