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Meta is set to report its first quarter earnings on Wednesday after the bell, and investors will be looking for news on whether the company met its quarterly revenue goals of somewhere between $39.5bn and $41.8bn.
Wall Street is projecting the company will post $41.36bn in revenue on $5.21 in earnings per share.
While Meta has repeatedly beaten Wall Street expectations in the past few quarters, analysts were disappointed by the first quarter revenue outlook Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg shared at the end of 2024. The company is also planning on spending up to $65bn on AI infrastructure by the end of 2025. Uncertainty over Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs may yet roil ad markets, clouding the company’s financial outlook for near future quarters.
“Meta’s enormous investment in AI infrastructure will continue to weigh heavily on investors when the company reports quarterly earnings on April 30, 2025,” said analyst Debra Aho Williamson, founder and chief analyst of Sonata Insights. “But Meta will resist directly monetizing AI this year, focusing instead on building AI usage among its app users, advertisers and developers using Llama.”
In the weeks leading up to the earnings report, Meta has had a mix of AI-related news including the launch of a standalone AI app that would serve as its ChatGPT competitor. But a WSJ report exposed the existing chatbots integrated into the company’s various products, including Facebook and Instagram, were given the ability to perform “romantic role play” even with the platforms’ teen users. Executives at the company, which repeatedly has touted its nearly 1 billion users of its AI chatbots, also admit that many of those users access the chatbot through its hard-to-avoid takeover of the search bars of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. The company has not detailed how many interactions with the chatbot or how deep those interactions need to be to consider a person a user of the AI chatbot.
Paired with Meta’s ongoing antitrust trial – where the company faces claims that it built an illegal social media monopoly with its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp – the uncertain AI future adds to the concerns some analysts may have around Meta’s financials despite what it may look like on paper.
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“Meta’s earnings call comes at a precarious time where the company’s future is literally being debated in court – the results of which could fundamentally alter the social media landscape,” said Forrester VP, Research Director Mike Proulx. “Meta is smart to direct more resources into improving Threads and Facebook since those could be the only two apps the company is left with. It’s also notable that Meta just laid off a number of employees in its Reality Labs division, which has been a continued and growing leaky bucket for Meta.”
