Meta's first quarter earnings, revenue beat Wall Street's expectations
[May 01, 2025] By
BARBARA ORTUTAY
Instagram and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. posted
better-than-expected results Wednesday for the first quarter thanks to
strong advertising revenue — boosted by artificial intelligence tools —
on its social media platforms.
Meta's stock climbed in extended trading after the results came out.
It was a “a good quarter for Meta, but it was before the economic
turmoil really kicked in and before the seesaw of the tariffs began,”
said Sonata Insights chief analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “It was also
before we started to see pullbacks in ad spending from China-based
advertisers like Temu and Shein.”
Going forward, she added, Meta should be able to withstand any revenue
shortfall from advertisers from China if it can continue to improve its
AI-driven advertising tools.
The company earned $16.64 billion, or $6.43 per share, in the
January-March period, up 35% from $12.37 billion, or $4.71 per share, in
the same period a year earlier.
Revenue rose 16% to $42.31 billion from $36.46 billion a year earlier.
Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $5.23 per share on
revenue of $41.34 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.
For the current quarter, Meta forecast revenue in the range of $42.5
billion to $45.5 billion. Analysts are expecting $43.84 billion.
The Menlo Park, California-based company also raised its capital
expenditures estimate for 2025 to $64 billion-$72 billion, up from its
prior outlook of $60 billion-$65 billion. Meta said the new guidance
“reflects additional data center investments to support our artificial
intelligence efforts as well as an increase in the expected cost of
infrastructure hardware.”
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Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at LlamaCon 2025, an AI
developer conference, in Menlo Park, Calif., Tuesday, April 29,
2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
 “We’ve had a strong start to an
important year, our community continues to grow and our business is
performing very well,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.
“We’re making good progress on AI glasses and Meta AI, which now has
almost 1 billion monthly actives.”
He said in a conference call with analysts that the company is in a
good position to navigate the ongoing economic “uncertainty.”
Zacks Investment Research analyst Andrew Rocco said that while many
companies have not been providing guidance amid tariff concerns and
an uncertain economic environment, the fact that Meta did is a
“bullish sign.”
Meta said more than 3.4 billion people, on average, used at least
one of its apps in March. That's up 6% from a year earlier.
On Tuesday, Meta released a standalone AI app, called Meta AI, that
includes a “discover” feed that lets users see how others are
interacting with AI.
Meta shares jumped $24.20, or 4.4%, to $573.20 in after-hours
trading. The stock is down about 8% year-to-date.
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