Meta reported weaker-than-expected user numbers and warned of a significant acceleration in infrastructure spending in 2025 in its third-quarter earnings report on Wednesday.

The company’s stock price fell slightly in after-hours trading.

Here are the results.

• Earnings per share: $6.03 vs. $5.25 expected by LSEG
• Gain: $40.59 billion versus $40.29 billion expected by LSEG

Third quarter revenue rose 19% year over year, while net profit grew 35% to $15.7 billion, compared to $11.6 billion a year earlier. That represents Meta’s lowest year-over-year net income growth since the second quarter of 2023.

The company reported 3.29 billion daily active people for the third quarter. That was an increase of 5% year on year, but fell short of analyst expectations of 3.31 billion.

Meta also raised capital spending guidance for fiscal year 2024 to between $38 billion and $40 billion, up from $37 billion to $40 billion previously. Additionally, the company said it expects capital expenditures to continue to grow significantly through 2025 due to an acceleration in infrastructure costs.

“Our AI investments continue to require serious infrastructure, and I expect to continue to invest significantly there,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg has pointed to the company’s massive investments in artificial intelligence, including spending billions of dollars on Nvidia’s popular graphics processing units, which are helping to power the company’s core online advertising business in the wake of Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update The company has been improving and building more data centers to provide the technology infrastructure needed for its AI strategy.

More than 1 million advertisers have used Meta’s generative AI advertising tools, Zuckerberg said.

Meta expects total costs for fiscal 2024 to be between $96 billion and $98 billion, lower than previous expectations of $96 billion to $99 billion.

Meta’s advertising revenue for the quarter was $39.9 billion, up 18.7% year over year. Advertising accounted for 98.3% of Meta’s total revenue in the third quarter.

Meta expects fourth-quarter revenue to be between $45 billion and $48 billion. The midpoint of that guidance is higher than the analyst consensus of $46.3 billion.

The company’s Reality Labs hardware unit posted an operating loss of $4.4 billion in the third quarter, below analyst expectations of $4.68 billion. Revenue in that unit rose 29% year over year to $270 million in the third quarter, below analyst expectations of $310.4 million.

Since 2020, Meta’s Reality Labs unit has posted an operating loss of more than $58 billion.

The company’s total workforce grew 9% year-on-year to 72,404 as of September 30.

Zuckerberg has pointed to the company’s massive investments in artificial intelligence, including spending billions of dollars Nvidias popular graphics processing units, helping to improve the company’s core online advertising business in the wake of Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update.

The social media company’s results come a day after digital advertising companies Alphabet, Reddit And Snap all reported solid quarterly results. Microsoft on Wednesday reported third-quarter earnings that were up and down.

Apple And Amazon The quarterly figures will be announced on Thursday.