MENLO PARK, Calif., April 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2024. "It's been a good start to the year," said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. "The new version of Meta AI with Llama 3 is another step towards building the world's leading AI. We're seeing healthy growth across our apps and we continue making steady progress building the metaverse as well."   First Quarter 2024 Financial Highlights Three Months Ended March 31, % Change In millions, except percentages and per share amounts 2024 2023 Revenue $               36,455 $               28,645 27 % Costs and expenses 22,637 21,418 6 % Income from operations $               13,818 $                 7,227 91 % Operating margin 38 % 25 % Provision for income taxes $                 1,814 $                 1,598 14 % Effective tax rate 13 % 22 % Net income $               12,369 $                 5,709 117 % Diluted earnings per share (EPS) $                   4.71 $                   2.20 114 %   First Quarter 2024 Operational and Other Financial Highlights Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 3.24 billion on average for March 2024, an increase of 7% year-over-year. Ad impressions – Ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 20% year-over-year. Average price per ad – Average price per ad increased by 6% year-over-year. Revenue – Total revenue and revenue on a constant currency basis were $36.46 billion and $36.35 billion, respectively, both of which increased by 27% year-over-year. Costs and expenses – Total costs and expenses were $22.64 billion, an increase of 6% year-over-year. Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $6.72 billion. Capital return program – Share repurchases were $14.64 billion of our Class A common stock and dividends payments were $1.27 billion. Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities – Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $58.12 billion as of March 31, 2024. Free cash flow was $12.53 billion. Headcount – Headcount was 69,329 as of March 31, 2024, a decrease of 10% year-over-year.   CFO Outlook Commentary We expect second quarter 2024 total revenue to be in the range of $36.5-39 billion. Our guidance assumes foreign currency is a 1% headwind to year-over-year total revenue growth, based on current exchange rates. We expect full-year 2024 total expenses to be in the range of $96-99 billion, updated from our prior outlook of $94-99 billion due to higher infrastructure and legal costs. For Reality Labs, we continue to expect operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts and our investments to further scale our ecosystem. We anticipate our full-year 2024 capital expenditures will be in the range of $35-40 billion, increased from our prior range of $30-37 billion as we continue to accelerate our infrastructure investments to support our artificial intelligence (AI) roadmap. While we are not providing guidance for years beyond 2024, we expect capital expenditures will continue to increase next year as we invest aggressively to support our ambitious AI research and product development efforts. Absent any changes to our tax landscape, we expect our full-year 2024 tax rate to be in the mid-teens. In addition, we continue to monitor an active regulatory landscape, including the increasing legal and regulatory headwinds in the EU and the U.S. that could significantly impact our business and our financial results. Q1 was a good start to the year. We're seeing strong momentum within our Family of Apps and are making important progress on our longer-term AI and Reality Labs initiatives that have the potential to transform the way people interact with our services over the coming years.   Webcast and Conference Call Information Meta will host a conference call to discuss the results at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET today. The live webcast of Meta's earnings conference call can be accessed at investor.fb.com, along with the earnings press release, financial tables, and slide presentation. Meta uses the investor.fb.com and about.fb.com/news/ websites as well as Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Page (facebook.com/zuck), Instagram account (instagram.com/zuck) and Threads profile (threads.net/zuck) as means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Following the call, a replay will be available at the same website. Transcripts of conference calls with publishing equity research analysts held today will also be posted to the investor.fb.com website.   About Meta Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.   Contacts Investors:Kenneth investor.fb.com Press:Ryan about.fb.com/news/   Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding our future business plans and expectations. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual results due to a variety of factors including: the impact of macroeconomic conditions on our business and financial results, including as a result of geopolitical events; our ability to retain or increase users and engagement levels; our reliance on advertising revenue; our dependency on data signals and mobile operating systems, networks, and standards that we do not control; changes to the content or application of third-party policies that impact our advertising practices; risks associated with new products and changes to existing products as well as other new business initiatives, including our artificial intelligence initiatives and metaverse efforts; our emphasis on community growth and engagement and the user experience over short-term financial results; maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation; our ongoing privacy, safety, security, and content review efforts; competition; risks associated with government actions that could restrict access to our products or impair our ability to sell advertising in certain countries; litigation and government inquiries; privacy, legislative, and regulatory concerns or developments; risks associated with acquisitions; security breaches; our ability to manage our scale and geographically-dispersed operations; and market conditions or other factors affecting the payment of dividends. These and other potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted are more fully detailed under the caption "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 2, 2024, which is available on our Investor Relations website at investor.fb.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2024. In addition, please note that the date of this press release is April 24, 2024, and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. For a discussion of limitations in the measurement of certain of our community metrics, see the section entitled "Limitations of Key Metrics and Other Data" in our most recent quarterly or annual report filed with the SEC.   Non-GAAP Financial Measures To supplement our condensed consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP), we use the following non-GAAP financial measures: revenue excluding foreign exchange effect, advertising revenue excluding foreign exchange effect, and free cash flow. The presentation of these financial measures is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. Investors are cautioned that there are material limitations associated with the use of non-GAAP financial measures as an analytical tool. In addition, these measures may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies, limiting their usefulness for comparison purposes. We compensate for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the GAAP amounts excluded from these non-GAAP financial measures. We believe these non-GAAP financial measures provide investors with useful supplemental information about the financial performance of our business, enable comparison of financial results between periods where certain items may vary independent of business performance, and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in operating our business. Our non-GAAP financial measures are adjusted for the following items: Foreign exchange effect on revenue. We translated revenue for the three months ended March 31, 2024 using the prior year's monthly ...