Meta Platforms Inc (META) shares surged 12% on Thursday morning after the company reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and gave an optimistic outlook for the third quarter, according to a news release by the social media giant.
For Q2, Meta posted earnings per share (EPS) of $7.14 and revenue of $47.5 billion. Analysts had expected EPS of $5.89 and revenue of $44.83 billion. This marks a strong improvement from the same period last year, when the company reported EPS of $5.16 and revenue of $39.07 billion.
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As per the company's report, Meta's advertising revenue reached $46.5 billion, surpassing the forecast of $44.07 billion. Meanwhile, its Reality Labs division, which focuses on virtual and augmented reality, reported a loss of $4.5 billion, slightly better than the expected $4.8 billion loss.
Looking ahead, Meta expects third-quarter revenue between $47.5 billion and $50.5 billion, higher than Wall Street's projection of $46.2 billion.
The strong earnings come as Meta increases investment in artificial intelligence. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently appointed Shengjia Zhao, a former OpenAI researcher, as the head of its new Superintelligence Lab. Meta has also made major hires from companies like GitHub, Safe Superintelligence, Apple, and Scale AI-where it invested $14.3 billion and recruited CEO Alexandr Wang.
Additionally, Meta is heavily investing in AI infrastructure. Zuckerberg announced that the company will spend hundreds of billions of dollars building several multi-gigawatt data centres across the U.S., including one called "Hyperion," which will eventually reach 5 gigawatts of capacity.
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