Meta more than doubles profit in first quarter

NEW YORK

Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has said its first-quarter profit more than doubled, boosted by higher advertising revenue and a 6 percent increase on the average price of ads on its platforms.

But its shares dropped sharply in after-hours trading following lukewarm revenue guidance.

Meta earned $12.37 billion in the January-March period. That's up from $5.71 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue rose 27 percent to $36.46 billion from $28.65 billion.

For the current quarter, the company said it expects revenue between $36.5 billion and $39 billion.

Meta also said it expects its 2024 capital expenses to be higher than anticipated due to its investments in artificial intelligence.

It is forecasting expenses in the range of $35 billion to $40 billion, up from its earlier guidance of $30 billion to $37 billion.

Meta, along with leading AI developers Google and OpenAI have been churning out new AI language models and hoping to persuade customers they’ve got the smartest, handiest or most efficient chatbots.

“Meta’s earnings should serve as a stark warning for companies reporting this earnings season," said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com “Even though the company did beat estimates in all top- and bottom-line metrics, it didn’t matter as much as the reported lowering revenue expectations for the second quarter.”

The number of people using Meta's apps, meanwhile, continued to increase, with 3.24 billion users on average for March in its “family of apps” that includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. That's up 7 percent year-over-year.