Meta revenue beats estimates on advertising stability

Meta posted first-quarter sales that beat Wall Street estimates, a sign that the company’s advertising business is so far weathering the Trump administration’s ongoing trade war. Sales were $42.3 billion in the first quarter, the maker of Facebook and Instagram said Wednesday. That beat analysts’ estimates for $41.4 billion for the quarter ended March 31. The company also said current-quarter revenue will be in line with analysts’ expectations, and that it will boost spending. Meta needs its advertising business to continue growing to fund an expensive expansion in artificial intelligence, which is driving the future of the business through improvements to ads, algorithms and personalization. The company raised its projection for full-year capital expenditures as it invests heavily to keep pace with rivals such as OpenAI and Google in developing large language models and chatbots. Meta now expects to spend $64 billion to $72 billion, up from its prior outlook of $60 billion to $65 billion. The company said the updated forecast reflects “additional data center investments to support our artificial intelligence efforts as well as an increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware.” Shares rose as much as 5.6% in after-hours trading, after closing at $549. Meta stock was down more than 6% year-to-date before the company reported earnings, still performing better than most of America’s biggest technology companies amid a market selloff spurred by the Trump administration’s trade war and increased tariffs. Advertising across Meta’s social apps makes up 98% of the company’s revenue. —Bloomberg News

Meta revenue beats estimates on advertising stability

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