Meta Brings Muse to AI Glasses, Shares Fall 3.6%

Deutsche Bank has laid out three scenarios for Meta Muse, forecasting that the product could generate $36.3 billion in sales by 2030 in its most optimistic case. The middle case projects about $10.7 million, while the base case puts revenue potential at roughly $2.4 billion. The forecasts were detailed on page seven of a Deutsche Bank note, and Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi said he double-checked the top figure to confirm it was $36.3 billion and not $36.3 million. Sozzi noted Meta's stock has climbed roughly 23 to 24 percent over the past month on optimism about Muse, citing strong downloads and early use cases. He also discussed Meta's talent push, including the hiring of the former MongoDB chief executive, with a former Meta chief technology officer who said Mark Zuckerberg personally recruits key leaders.

Meta Platforms' Reality Labs unit generated $431 million of second-quarter revenue against a $4.62 billion operating loss, with a first-half loss of $8.65 billion, leaving the business far from covering its costs. Adding the quarterly operating loss to revenue implies approximately $5.05 billion of operating costs, meaning revenue would need to reach $5.05 billion to break even at fixed costs, nearly 12 times the reported figure. At an illustrative 30% contribution margin on incremental revenue, offsetting the current $4.62 billion operating loss would require roughly $15.4 billion of additional quarterly sales, and at a 50% margin the requirement would still be around $9.24 billion. Meta's Family of Apps produced $23.39 billion of quarterly operating income against consolidated operating income of $18.78 billion, so Reality Labs consumed approximately 20% of the apps' operating profit. Annualizing the latest Reality Labs loss gives about $18.48 billion, and under an illustrative 20% tax assumption eliminating that expense would add about $14.78 billion of after-tax profit, worth about $370 billion at a hypothetical 25 times earnings, roughly one-fifth of Meta's current market capitalization. Meta is simultaneously funding a large AI infrastructure program, with second-quarter operating cash flow of $31.86 billion and capital spending of $31.08 billion leaving only about $784 million of free cash flow, against a stated annual capital-spending range of $130 billion to $145 billion.