$Meta Platforms (META.US)$Revenue and earnings per share for the third quarter all exceeded expectations, cost reduction measures continued to bear fruit, and profits surged beyond expectations. Stock prices once rose 5.5% during the conference call, and after the market.

In a conference call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg statedArtificial intelligence will be the company's biggest investment priority in 2024.

The short video business is beginning to show results. Reels has increased the usage time of Instagram by more than 40% since its launch, and the monthly active users of Threads, a short message social networking platform known as the “Twitter killer,” are close to 100 million. Zuckerberg said that corporate messaging services will be the company's next major pillar.

Meta warned in a conference call that the advertising business is heavily dependent on the macroeconomic environment associated with spending, and the company's revenue prospects for next year are uncertain. Meta's stock price turned down under the influence of pessimistic predictions.

AI is a priority for 2024

Zuckerberg said artificial intelligence will be the biggest investment priority in 2024, and the company's human resources will be transferred to artificial intelligence. He said:

Artificial intelligence continues to innovate, and we are beginning to launch many new consumer AI experiences through the Connect Developer Conference, and we expect these experiences to be an important part of all of our applications and businesses over the next few years.

The experiences we're launching on Connect will change the way people use all of our services, streams, messaging, hardware, ads, business messages, and interactions with creators.

Tweaking these experiences will take time before hundreds of millions of people can use them. I anticipate refining these products and the vision we've outlined on Connect will be our theme for next year.

Zuckerberg emphasized that this will also be reflected in resource allocation:

In terms of investment priorities,Artificial intelligence will be our biggest investment area in engineering and computing resources in 2024But I want to avoid allocating large amounts of new human resources. Therefore,We will continue to de-prioritize many non-AI projects within the company to shift human resources to artificial intelligence jobs.

Meta is betting on using content recommended by artificial intelligence algorithms to keep users on social media such as Facebook.

Threads monthly active users close to 100 million

Including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other services, Meta's “Family of Apps” (Family of Apps) revenue for the quarter exceeded expectations and increased by more than 20%, and profit far exceeded expectations, surging by nearly 90%.

In terms of Instagram's short video app Reels, Zuckerberg said:

We estimate that through all of the ranking and product improvements we've made, Reels has increased Instagram usage time by over 40% since launch.

We also reached our profit milestone earlier than expected, and we estimate that Reels is now net neutral on the company's overall advertising revenue.

The monthly active users of Threads, a short message social networking platform known as the “Twitter killer,” are close to 100 million. Zuckerberg said he will focus on further developing this community.

He also said, “I've long believed there should be a more active public conversation app with 1 billion users,” implicitly hitting X (original Twitter) and Musk in the face. Musk said in November last year that it is expected that within a year and a half, the number of monthly Twitter users will exceed 1 billion, but a recent report shows that both its traffic and the number of monthly active users declined year-on-year in September.

Corporate messaging services continue to grow, and Zuckerberg said:

I believe it will be the next pillar of our business,Our platform has over 600 million conversations between people and businesses every day.

The outlook for next year is pessimistic, Meta's stock price turns down

Meta's third-quarter spending as a share of revenue fell to a multi-year low of 59%. Summing up, Zuckerberg said he was very satisfied with the efficiency gains:

We've become a leaner organization, and we're able to deliver and advance the cutting edge of technology faster in all of our long-term plans while investing heavily in the future. We have also just achieved our highest operating margin in two years. As a result, I'm looking forward to improving product dynamics and operational discipline.

Looking ahead, Meta expects revenue for the fourth quarter to be 36.5 billion to 40 billion US dollars, which is higher than Wall Street's forecast of 38.76 billion US dollars.

Meta also issued an early warning that next year, the metaverse business that the company focuses on investing in will significantly expand losses from this year.

Meta warned during the call that the advertising business is heavily dependent on the macroeconomic environment associated with spending.Meta's chief financial officer Susan Li said in a conference call that Meta is very vulnerable to fluctuations in the macro environment, and next year's revenue prospects are uncertain.

Due to pessimistic performance guidelines, by the end of the conference call, Meta's stock price had erased all post-market gains and turned down 3.43%.

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