Meta reports record revenue for third quarter, along with insight into Reality Labs

Meta Platforms has had a massive third quarter as it reached a record $40.59 billion in sales, up 19% compared with the year earlier.

The figures were released on Wednesday through its filing of third quarter results, with its sales slightly beating expectations from Wall Street.

Despite this, the revenue growth was slower in comparison to the April to June period which had a growth rate of 22%. The majority of the quarter’s revenue came from advertising, with it amounting for a huge 96%.

“We had a good quarter driven by AI progress across our apps and business,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO in the report.

“We also have strong momentum with Meta AI, Llama adoption, and AI-powered glasses.”

The company has honed in on AI more than ever before this year, with integrations and creations to capitalize on the AI boom.

The company’s Reality Labs unit was one of the lowest revenue earners when looking at the statistics, with this department housing the Quest headset and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

The unit saw operating losses of $4.4 billion in the three-month period, but its revenue throughout Q3 of 2024 was higher than Q3 of 2023.

The operating losses for Reality Labs are anticipated to continue year-over-year due to ongoing product development efforts and investments to scale the ecosystem.

It was in September when the company announced it had a prototype for what they dub to be “the most advanced pair of AI glasses ever made.”

Named as Orion, Meta has described its upcoming product as being a “feat of miniaturization’ as the components have been packed down to a fraction of a millimeter.

The smart assistant Meta AI, which has had a lot of focus this year, will be running on the glasses so users can achieve tasks like opening up a refrigerator and asking for a recipe based on what’s inside or video calling friends.

With the high revenue sum of the third quarter, the company expects its fourth quarter of 2024 total revenue to be in the range of $45-48 billion.

Featured Image: AI-generated via Ideogram

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