Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., wears a pair of Meta Oakley Vanguard AI glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta shares fell in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported lower-than-expected capital expenditures and missed on user growth.
Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $7.32 adjusted. The number is not comparable to estimates.
- Revenue: $56.3 billion vs. $55.45 billion estimates
Capital expenditures came in at $19.84 billion, below the $27.57 billion average estimate, according to StreetAccount. However, Meta said capex for the year will be between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from a prior range of $115 billion to $135 billion.
“This reflects our expectations for higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future year capacity,” Meta said in an earnings announcement.
Meta’s total expenses for the year remain unchanged from the company’s prior outlook and are projected to be in the range of $162 billion to $169 billion.
The company reported first-quarter daily active people, or DAP, of 3.56 billion, a 4% increase from the previous year. Wall Street was projecting that DAP would come in at 3.62 billion. The social media giant said there was a “slight decline in DAP on a quarter-over-quarter basis” because of “internet disruptions in Iran, as well as a restriction on access to WhatsApp in Russia.”
Meta said first quarter sales rose 33% year-over-year, and noted that second quarter revenue should come in the range of $58 billion to $61 billion. Analysts were projecting $59.5 billion.
The company said its headcount rose 1% year-over-year to 77,986 as of March 31. As it ramps up capex spending, Meta is trying to reduce its overall workforce.
Meta said last week that it’s laying off about 10% of its workforce, or 8,000 employees, while no longer hiring people for 6,000 open roles. Those cuts follow January’s layoffs affecting about 1,000 people in the company’s Reality Labs unit, and another round in March targeting hundreds of staffers in areas like Facebook, global operations and sales.
Tech stocks are slated to finish their best month since April 2020, the early days of the Covid pandemic, with the Nasdaq up 14% for the month as of Wednesday’s close.
Wall Street has been piling into the tech sector despite concerns that surging oil prices and supply chain disruptions from the war in Iran will lead to rising costs for AI infrastructure and related data centers buildouts. Meta and three othter hyperscalers — Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft — all reported results on Wednesday, updating investors for the first time since the U.S. began combat operations in Iran in late February.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spent the past three months continuing his company’s major AI push following a strategy and talent overhaul that initiated in June via a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI.
Through that deal, the social media giant gained Scale AI chief Alexandr Wang to lead its revamped AI unit Meta Superintelligence Labs and oversee the building of new models that could make Meta more competitive with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
Earlier this month, Meta debuted Muse Spark as its first proprietary foundation model. Investors will now be looking for Zuckerberg to start laying out a clearer strategy towards monetization.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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