) reports its second quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday, and the company’s AI spending and advertising business performance are set to take center stage.
The company’s Family of Apps revenue, which includes revenue from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, is expected to come in at $37.7 billion, up from $31.7 billion in Q2 last year. Like Google, Meta could get a lift from advertising surrounding this year’s election as well as the Olympics.“Meta heads into its Q2 earnings in a position of strength,” Forrester VP and research director Mike Proulx said ahead of the company’s earnings announcement.
While Meta’s advertising revenue looks set for strong performance, that doesn’t mean that every aspect of the company’s earnings report will be positive. Wall Street is still trying to determine how much longer tech companies will need to plow money into AI before they see some kind of revenue payoff.Last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta’s latest open-source large language model called Llama 3.1.
In Q1, Meta reported that the segment, which is tasked with developing the hardware and software meant to power Zuckerberg’s metaverse dream, lost some $3.8 billion. The division has also been plagued by turnover and a lack of clear vision, adding to Reality Labs’ troubles, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate faced a grilling from lawmakers about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month. New details have emerged about the shooting, including a potential social media account owned by the shooter and questions about when the Secret Service first saw the gunman on the roof.