META: Meta Stock Rises as Earnings Jump 50%, Zuck Plans Big Spending on AI

Net income was higher by about 50% to $20.8 billion. This year, Zuck said, will be a “really big year.”

💪 Breakdown: Numbers Time

• Meta stock META gained more than 2% in after-hours trading following the company’s fourth-quarter earnings data. The social media giant beat expectations on both earnings and revenue while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to spend “hundreds of billions” on artificial intelligence.
• Earnings per share for the December quarter landed at $8.02, up 50% year on year, and above Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $6.76. Revenue reached $48.4 billion, up 21%, and above the $47 billion eyeballed by investors. Net income soared to $20.8 billion, up nearly 50% from last year.

🎯 Zuck Takes It Away with the Guidance

• “This is going to be a really big year,” the Meta boss said in a call with investors after the earnings release. “This is going to be intense because we have about 48 weeks to get on the trajectory that we want to be on in AI.”
• Zuck also addressed the recent buzz around DeepSeek’s R1 AI model, a rival to ChatGPT. “There’s going to be an open-source standard globally. It’s important that it’s an American standard, so we take that seriously,” he said, adding: “Some of the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on.”

🙂 2025 Figures? Not Too Impressive

• For 2025, the Facebook parent has prepared a war chest of $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditures, up roughly 60% from last year. The enormous amount of cash would need to be used up really well to meet and exceed investors’ lofty expectations.
• For the current quarter, Meta projected revenue of $39.5 billion to $41.8 billion — not too impressive for Wall Street’s standards of $41.7 billion. Shares of Meta are up roughly 13% so far this year.