Meta stocks fall due to above-average third-quarter earnings and lack of user growth

Topline

Shares of Meta Platforms fell more than 3% as the company reported earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street expectations on Wednesday.

Important facts

Important background

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, is betting big on AI as it prepares to train the latest version of its flagship AI model Llama. “At this point, I'd rather risk building capacity before it's needed than too late,” Zuckerberg said on the company's second-quarter earnings call in July. Meta AI, the company's flagship chatbot, has nearly 500 million monthly active users, he said last month. Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, a surprise hit for the company, are a top-selling product in Ray-Ban stores across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Ray-Ban parent company EssilorLuxottica reported earlier this month. Meta's AI investments could also help boost user engagement on its social media apps, analysts at Truist Securities wrote ahead of the earnings release. In the social media space, Threads, Meta's X competitor, reached 200 million users about a year after its debut, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced.

Big number

1.5 trillion dollars. That's Meta's market cap, making it one of eight trillion-dollar companies worldwide.

Forbes rating

Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ranked No. 3 on this year's Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, is worth an estimated $207.5 billion, making him one in four people in the world, according to Forbes' real-time tracker , whose net worth exceeds $200 billion. Almost all of his assets are tied up in meta stocks and their performance. Zuckerberg's net worth has more than tripled from an estimated $64.4 billion last year.

What you should pay attention to

Meta is reportedly developing its own AI search engine to reduce its reliance on Google Search and Microsoft's Bing, The Information reported. The search engine is intended to help provide answers to questions asked of the Meta AI chatbot.

Surprising fact

In what has now been dubbed “Grubgate,” Meta fired about two dozen employees this month for misusing a $25 Grubhub meal credit. Employees reportedly used the loan to purchase non-food items such as laundry detergent and wine glasses.

Further reading

Instagram Launches New 'Sextortion' Guardrails for Child Safety – Here's What You Need to Know (Forbes)

How Two Students Used the Meta-Ray Bans to Access Personal Data (Forbes)