<div class="block">Meta is performing well after reporting its quarterly earnings but will it last? As guidance for the upcoming quarter has investors on edge, questions remain about some of the company&#39;s biggest investments like the Metaverse. Cheddar News senior reporter Michelle Castillo reported on the earnings and where the company stands with its progress in artificial intelligence development.</div>

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Meta Beats Earnings Expectations, AI Remains Top Priority

Meta gave its latest quarterly report yesterday and we got a glimpse into how the company is doing while it beat analyst expectations. We guidance for the upcoming quarter has some investors a bit worried for more. Bringing in our new senior reporter Michelle Castillo Michelle, let's recap. Meta's latest report. Well, let's start with the top and bottom line for me which had a stellar third quarter. The company reported earnings per share of $4.39 as well as revenue of $34 sorry, $34.15 billion. Both those figures beat the analyst estimates and revenue was actually up 23% year over year. That's outpacing other digital media and a uh ad reliant companies that have reported this quarter so far including alphabet and snap. So daily active users and average revenue per user also came in above projections. That's mostly because advertising has rebounded from a tough 2022 users have increased their time on Facebook and Instagram seven and 6% year over year respectively. However, meta is a little worried about the final quarter of this year. It mentioned the ongoing Israeli Hamas, Hamas conflict may affect future ad sales, meaning brands may pull back on spending. And for 2024 meta said it was gonna make most of its investments in A I. So this can improve everything from chat bots on its platform to add placement, to building uh A I into its hardware like its glasses. So while it did say it would be slowly increasing its number of employees to meet these initiatives, Ceo Mark Zuckerberg said he wants to avoid boosting head count extensive in a call with investors. So instead other parts of the company will be de prioritized to shift resources towards A I and Meta has been investing a lot into the metaverse through its reality labs division, Michelle, tell us more about that. So well, A I is going to be the biggest spend for meta. The metaverse is still the long term goal according to Zuckerberg. And expenses are expected to mount considerably in this division. Meta lost about $4 billion in Q one this year on reality labs. And in the next two quarters, it lost about $3.8 billion each revenue for this division also came in lower than analysts expected. This also included some sales from the meta quest three meta's newest headset which debuted in September. So Zuckerberg still believes in the metaverse on a call with investors. He said, quote, I think one of the most interesting questions for our industry over the coming decades is how we bring together our physical and digital worlds into a coherent and good experience. I think we're starting to see some of the building blocks come together. Another surprise hit for meta was threads. Of course, that's ex competitor, formerly known as Twitter. Does Zuckerberg have high hopes for that app? Well, Hannah, he does, he said there's a little under 100 million active monthly users at this point and he thinks that it can, that number can really scale. He said, quote, I thought for a long time, there should be a billion person public conversations app. That's a bit more positive. And I think if we keep at it this for a few more years, then I think we have a good chance of achieving our vision there. Now, meta CFO Susan Lee also called Threads a compelling opportunity. All right, we shall see Michelle Castillo. Thank you so much.