Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta shares dropped 9% after the company reported third-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat on sales.
Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $7.25 adj. vs. $6.69 estimated
- Revenue: $51.24 billion vs. $49.41 billion estimated
Meta said that the implementation of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act resulted in a one-time, non-cash income tax charge of $15.93 billion. The company said it expects the act to result in “a significant reduction” in its U.S. federal cash tax payments for the rest of 2025 and future years.
The social media company’s third-quarter sales rose 26% year-over-year.
The company said it expects fourth quarter revenue to be in the range of $56 billon to $59 billion. The midpoint of that range comes in above what was expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.
Meta raised the low end of its total expenses for the year by $2 billion, saying expenses will come in between $116 billion to $118 billion. That figure was previously $114 billion to $118 billion.
The company also raised its 2025 guidance for capital expenditures, which will now come in the range of $70 billion to $72 billion. It’s prior outlook was between the range of $66 to $72 billion.
Meta’s Reality Labs hardware unit reported a third-quarter loss of $4.4 billion on $470 million in sales.
The company said that it saw 3.54 billion daily active people across its apps for the quarter, ahead of Wall Street’s expectations of 3.5 billion daily active people.
Meta’s advertising sales were $50.08 billion during the third quarter, ahead of Wall Street’s expectations of $48.5 billion.
The social media company said last Wednesday that it would lay off about 600 workers in its Superintelligence Labs AI unit, but it left that group’s top-tier TBD Labs unscathed. A day before, Meta said it formed a joint venture agreement with Blue Owl Capital in a deal worth $27 billion to help fund and build a gigantic data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
Correction: Analysts expected Meta revenue to come in at $49.41 billion. That number was misstated in the earlier version of this story.
www.cnbc.com
#Meta #shares #drop #earnings #beat #company #takes #onetime #tax #charge
