Meta Platforms delivered fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings that surpassed analyst expectations, propelled by a robust holiday advertising period. Financial performance reflects the initial benefits of extensive AI investments, drawing a positive market response and lifting investor confidence. Meta’s stocks were up nearly 7% in an after-hour trading.
The company’s revenue for the final quarter of 2025 climbed 24% year-over-year to $59.89 billion, outpacing estimates from Wall Street. Diluted earnings per share reached $8.88, marking an 11% increase from the previous year’s comparable period.
Annual metrics were similarly strong. Total revenue for 2025 rose 22%, hitting $200.97 billion. Net income for the year reached $60.46 billion. The company recorded an 18% rise in ad impressions during the fourth quarter, while the average price for each ad advanced 6%. Meta’s combined family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, reported daily active users of 3.58 billion at December’s close, representing 7% growth from the earlier year.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg emphasized Meta’s 2025 transition toward “personal superintelligence,” attributing business gains to the rollout of new AI-powered features across its application suite. The company advanced its deployment of sophisticated AI models, which now underpin content recommendations for key platforms. Although Reality Labs, Meta’s extended reality division, continued to report sizable operating losses of approximately $6 billion in the fourth quarter and a cumulative total nearing $80 billion since late 2020, sales of AI-enabled smart glasses more than tripled over the year, pointing to early traction in wearable artificial intelligence.
Meta issued a strong revenue forecast for the first quarter of 2026, anticipating between $53.5 billion and $56.5 billion, exceeding current market expectations. Nevertheless, capital expenditure is slated to increase significantly, as Meta plans to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion in 2026 to further its expansion of data centers and customized silicon, critical to reinforcing its AI technology lead.
