The 2024 Q4 earnings season continues to roll along, with this week’s reporting docket notably stacked. It’s been a positive cycle so far, kicked off by inspiring results from the big banks.
Throughout the period, we’ve seen several companies, namely Mag 7 members Apple AAPL and Meta Platforms META, break quarterly records, reflecting their operational successes.
Let’s take a closer look at the record-breaking releases.
Meta Reports Record Sales & Profit
Concerning headline figures in its release, Meta Platforms posted adjusted EPS of $8.02 and record sales of $48.4 billion, reflecting growth rates of 50% and 21%, respectively. Net income of $20.9 billion was the company’s highest read ever.
Shares have been red-hot over the last year on the back of strong quarterly results, gaining nearly 80% and crushing the S&P 500.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Importantly, the company’s ad business continued to perform at a high level, with revenue of $46.8 billion again exceeding our consensus estimate and reflecting 20% year-over-year growth. As shown below, the advertising results for META have been rock-solid over recent periods, regularly bringing sizable beats.
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In addition, META continues to see nice user growth, with Family Daily Active People (DAP) improving 4% year-over-year to roughly 3.4 billion. Average revenue per user has increased likewise amid the strong advertising efforts, improving by a sizable 41% year-over-year.
As shown below, DAP results have regularly exceeded our expectations over recent quarters. The Family Daily Active People metric includes the company’s entire family of apps, encompassing Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, and Messenger, providing a consolidated view of activity.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Apple Breaks Multiple Records
Concerning headline figures in its release, Apple posted adjusted EPS of $2.40 and sales of $124.3 billion, reflecting growth rates of 10% and 4%, respectively. Both EPS and sales figures reflected all-time records for the company, with Services revenue also touching an all-time high.
Services results have regularly exceeded our consensus expectations in recent releases, as shown below.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
iPhone results came in a tad soft, an interesting development given the implementation of Apple Intelligence. iPhone sales of $69.2 billion fell roughly 1% year-over-year, also marginally falling short of our consensus estimate.
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In addition, it’s worth noting that China sales continue to decelerate amid stiffer competition, with sales of $18.5 billion in the region down notably from the $20.8 billion mark in the year-ago period. While China continues to negatively impact results, the risk and growth cooldown has been well-known here for multiple periods, not really anything ‘new’ for the market to digest.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The company’s installed base of active devices also reached a new all-time high across all products and geographic segments, with shares popping nicely following the print in after-hours trading. The stock has nearly matched the S&P 500’s return over the last year, gaining 27.6%.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Bottom Line
We continue to wade through the 2024 Q4 earnings cycle, with this week’s reporting docket notably rich.
The period has been positive so far, underpinned by an initial strong showing from the banks and forecasted tech strength yet again.
And so far, two Mag 7 members, namely Apple AAPL and Meta Platforms META, posted results that broke company records.
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