Manuel Orbegozo/Reuters
Meta Platforms, the Silicon Valley parent company of social media sites Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, the messaging app WhatsApp, and more, releases its earnings quarterly.
CEO and chairman Mark Zuckerberg plays a leading role on these calls to report Meta’s status to its shareholders.
Meta’s next earnings report is scheduled for July 30th, 2025, after the market close.
Here’s a breakdown of Meta’s recent earnings.
Meta Q1 earnings 2025
Meta reported its first-quarter earnings for 2025 on April 30. The figures exceeded analyst expectations considerably, the company reporting revenue of $42.31 billion for the quarter, which represented a 16% increase over Q1 of 2024.
The company’s earnings fell compared to the prior quarter, Q4 2024, but overall usage of Meta products was reported to be increasing; Meta reported growth in the number of people using its “Family of Apps” — which includes Instagram and WhatsApp — to an estimated 3.4 billion people using at least one of the apps per day.
Meta CFO Susan Li said the company’s capital expenditures would be between $64 billion to $72 billion in 2025 — a higher-than-expected range, in part due to increased data center investments to support Meta’s AI initiatives.
On the earnings call itself, AI was a strong theme — the words “Meta AI” were used no fewer than 34 times, with Zuckerberg referring to Meta AI and “AI devices” as “long-term investments that are downstream from us building general intelligence and leading AI models and infrastructure.”
He added: “Even with our significant investments, we don’t need to succeed in all of these areas to have a good ROI. But if we do, then I think that we will be wildly happy with the investments that we’re making.”
1st Quarter results
- Earnings per share: $6.43 vs. estimate of $5.25
- Revenue: $42.31 billion vs. estimate of $41.38 billion
- Operating margin: 41.5% vs. estimate of 37.5%
Meta Q4 earnings 2024
Meta reported its fourth-quarter earnings on January 29 after the closing bell. The social media company crushed Wall Street’s expectations.
Meta tried to reassure investors about how much it’s spending on artificial intelligence and about possible competition from Chinese AI company DeepSeek.
The Facebook parent reported revenue for the period of $48.39 billion, beating the consensus analyst estimate of $46.98 billion.
While its first-quarter sales forecast came in below estimates, investors seemed more concerned about other matters.
During Meta’s earnings conference call, Zuckerberg fielded questions from analysts on the company’s recent content moderation changes, its big spending plans for 2025, TikTok, and more.
He teased Llama 4 news and said he was “optimistic” about “progress and innovation” under Donald Trump’s government. Zuckerberg also responded to a question about DeepSeek, saying it was important to have a domestic firm set the standard on open-source AI “for our own national advantage.”
4th Quarter results
- Earnings per share: $8.02 vs. estimate of $6.78
- Revenue: $48.39 billion vs. estimate of $46.98 billion
- Operating margin: 48% vs. estimate of 42.6%
Meta Q3 earnings 2024
Meta reported its third-quarter earnings on October 30, 2024, after the market close. The company made it clear it would not be slowing down on its spending while building out its AI infrastructure this year — and expects those costs to increase in 2025.
“We had a good quarter driven by AI progress across our apps and business,” Zuckerberg said. “We also have strong momentum with Meta AI, Llama adoption, and AI-powered glasses.”
The company’s revenue for the quarter was $40.59 billion, ahead of the expected $40.25 billion. Earnings per share were in at $6.06, above the expected $5.25.
In its core business of advertising, Meta said its average price per ad had increased 11% year over year.
However, the company missed expectations for user growth. It said daily active users grew 5% year over year to 3.29 billion. That was lower than expectations of 3.31 billion daily users.
Shares dipped more than 3% following Meta’s earnings call with analysts, during which Zuckerberg talked through the company’s AI investment strategy and said that “this might be the most dynamic moment I’ve seen in our industry.”
The company’s big bet on AI, which includes both training its own AI models and launching consumer products across its platforms powered by them, continued to drive up its costs.
3rd Quarter results
- Earnings per share: $6.03 vs. estimate of $5.25
- Revenue: $40.59 billion vs. estimate of $40.25 billion
- Operating margin: 43% vs. estimate of 39.6%
Meta Q2 earnings 2024
Meta reported second-quarter earnings on July 31, 2024, after the market close, and it was another win for Zuckerberg.
The Facebook parent’s revenue and earnings-per-share beat consensus analyst estimates, driven by better-than-expected advertising sales.
Like other tech giants, Meta has been heavily investing in generative AI with little to show for it so far, but Zuckerberg defended its spending plans in the earnings call.
“Before we’re really talking about monetization of any of those things by themselves, I don’t think anyone should be surprised I would say that would be years,” he said, noting that “the early signals on this are good.”
Zuckerberg also said in the earnings release that the company’s chatbot, Meta AI, is on pace to become the most widely used in the world by the end of 2024.
Meta’s stock rose more than 6% in after-hours trading shortly after the results.
2nd Quarter Results
- Earnings per share: $5.16 vs. estimate of $4.72
- Revenue: $39.07 billion, vs. estimate of $38.34 billion
- Operating margin: 38% vs. estimate of 37.7%
Meta earnings history
Meta’s earnings are a chance for investors to hear from Zuckerberg himself. The founder and CEO tends to sprinkle in interesting snippets during earnings calls and has a front-row seat to the growing AI boom.
Meta has shifted its focus recently from the Metaverse to AI-based large language models. Meta’s AI offering, Llama, is unique in that it is open-sourced, similar to China’s DeepSeek. The company has also talked up the adoption of AI technologies into its ad network, which has shown solid results so far.
An ongoing antitrust case from the federal government has recently weighed on Meta. The lawsuit alleges that Meta illegally purchased Instagram and WhatsApp to crush the competition and maintain a monopoly in the social networking industry.
Zuckerberg himself reportedly lobbied the Trump administration to ditch the lawsuit. The six-week trial concluded in May 2025, and it’s unclear when the judge will make a decision on the case.
If Meta proves unsuccessful in fighting the antitrust lawsuit, it could lead to a break up of some aspects of its business.
Jacqui Kenyon contributed to an earlier version of this story
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