Meta just delivered a blowout quarter that sent the stock soaring 10% in after-hours trading. The social media giant crushed Wall Street's fourth-quarter estimates with $59.89 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $8.88, then topped it off with first-quarter guidance up to $56.5 billion - way ahead of the $51.41 billion analysts expected. The surprise beat signals that Meta's massive AI investments are paying off, even as the company doubles down with plans to spend up to $135 billion on infrastructure this year.
Meta just reminded Wall Street why it's still one of the most profitable companies in tech. The numbers dropped Wednesday evening and they're impressive - $8.88 in earnings per share on nearly $60 billion in quarterly revenue, both comfortably ahead of what analysts projected. But the real story is what's coming next. CFO Susan Li pointed to "strong demand that we saw through the end of Q4 and continuing into the start of 2026" when explaining the company's aggressive first-quarter guidance. That forward-looking confidence sent shares jumping as much as 10% after hours, adding billions to Meta's market cap in minutes.
The advertising machine continues to print money. Meta's ad business pulled in $58.1 billion during the quarter, making up 97% of total revenue and growing 24% year-over-year. That's remarkable considering the company now reaches 3.58 billion daily active users across its family of apps - Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. The scale is staggering, and advertisers keep paying up for access to that audience.
But CEO Mark Zuckerberg is playing a longer game. During the earnings call, he laid out plans to release Meta's next-generation AI models "over the coming months," teasing that the company will "steadily push the frontier over the course of the year." That ambition comes with a hefty price tag. Meta expects to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, nearly double the $72.2 billion it spent last year. The company explicitly tied that spending surge to "increased investment to support our Meta Superintelligence Labs efforts and core business."
