(Bloomberg) – Meta Platforms Inc. released its first-quarter sales, beating Wall Street estimates, which suggests the company’s advertising business is causing weathering to date for the Trump administration’s ongoing trade war.
Facebook and Instagram makers said Wednesday that sales in the first quarter were $42.3 billion. For the quarter ended March 31, the quarter beat analyst estimates. The company also said revenue for the current quarter will be consistent with analyst expectations and that it will increase spending as it continues to invest in artificial intelligence.
“We are in a good position in terms of macroeconomic uncertainty,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on the company’s revenue call.
Meta needs its advertising business, accounting for 98% of the company’s revenue, to continue to grow to fund the expensive expansion of AI. So far, AI is helping to improve the ad targeting and personalization of what people see on social networks. Meta is also investing heavily to keep pace with competitors such as OpenAI and Alphabet Inc. Google to develop large language models and chatbots.
Meta is now expected to spend $64 billion to $72 billion, from its previous $60 billion outlook to $65 billion. The company said the updated forecast reflects “additional data center investment to support our AI efforts, as well as the expected increase in infrastructure hardware.”
Meta shares rose more than 6% in after-hours trading after closing at $549. Stocks of companies using equipment in AI computing, including NVIDIA Corp., were also gathered after the New York market closed. The dollar stock fell more than 6% before the company reported earnings, but was still better than most of the largest technology companies in the U.S. due to market sell-offs spurred by the Trump administration’s trade war and tariffs hikes.
“While many companies are not providing forward-looking guidance in a macro environment that is focused on issues and uncertainty, Meta does — a bullish sign,” said Andrew Rocco, equity strategist at Zacks Investment Research. Rocco not only pointed to the company’s second-quarter forecast, but also to the company’s expected capital expenditure, which he said was a positive view of the broader AI industry.
Meta reported earnings per share was $6.43 in the first quarter, up 37% from the same period last year, surpassing analysts’ average estimate of $5.25.
In January, Zuckerberg said a massive AI investment said the company would eventually spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the technology. Despite the global economic turmoil, these plans seem to be on track, even as Chinese AI companies figure out how to do more in less ways. Earlier this year, a Chinese company called DeepSeek released a competitive model that said it uses cheaper and less functional chips.
Meta’s quarterly results came on the second day of the company’s hosting of the inaugural Cougar Conference, which focused on its AI development efforts. The company has launched a new standalone AI app called Meta AI, hoping that the app will compete with competitors like Openai’s Chatgpt and provides users with a easier way to access the product without having to go to Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said the company’s llama model has been downloaded about 1.2 billion times.
(Updated using CEO quotation in paragraph 3.)
More stories like this are available Bloomberg.com
