Meta beats revenue and profit expectations in third quarter

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Facebook owner Meta announced Wednesday that its profits surpassed market expectations in the third quarter, fueled by AI-driven progress across its apps and businesses.

Meta, which is also the parent company of Instagram and WhatsApp, said net income in the third quarter was $15.7 billion -- up 35 percent on the same period last year.

This was above the expectations of analysts surveyed by Factset of $13.5 billion.

Revenues rose 19 percent to $40.6 billion, slightly higher than analyst estimates.

"We had a good quarter driven by AI progress across our apps and business," Meta's founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Like its Big Tech peers, Meta is rushing into artificial intelligence as it tries to build revenue streams away from its social media core business.

And unlike its bet on virtual reality a few years ago, Wall Street has hailed the move into AI, driving up Meta's share price by about 70 percent this year.

Meta's share price slipped more than two percent after its earnings results were published, as traders digested the news.

In recent months Zuckerberg has put most of his attention on the company's AI innovations that have been rolled out as chatbots across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Reactions were positive last month when the company unveiled its Orion augmented reality glasses, which remain experimental but bolstered confidence that Meta will be a leader in the AI wearable space.

Meta also hopes to ride on the excitement of its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which it developed with EssilorLuxottica, the European eyewear giant.

Analysts believe that the glasses could be a hot item during the end-of-year holiday season.