Mark Zuckerberg rekindled investor fears that he would not control costs at Meta after vowing to increase spending and turn the social media group into “the leading AI company in the world”, sending its shares tumbling more than 15 per cent in pre-market trading on Thursday.
Meta’s earnings release showed revenues at the company — whose platforms include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — had risen 27 per cent to $36.5bn in the first three months of 2024, just above analysts’ expectations of $36.2bn.
But Meta also raised the high end of its full-year capital expenditure guidance from $37bn to $40bn in order to “continue to accelerate our infrastructure investments to support our artificial intelligence (AI) road map”. Last year capital expenditure spending totalled $28.1bn.