Meta's revenue beats estimates, but stock drops on tax charge
Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) pulled in $51.24 billion in revenue for July-September 2025—beating Wall Street's predictions.
But thanks to a huge $16 billion tax charge tied to Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, profits took a hit and Meta's stock dropped over 6% after hours.
Meta's ad business remains strong
Most of that money came from ads across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads—showing Meta is still strong in the digital ad game.
The company has raised its capital expenditure forecast to $70-72 billion for this period, especially on building out its artificial intelligence infrastructure and investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI.
CFO says costs will keep rising into 2026
Even with all this investment in AI, Meta recently laid off about 600 people working on it—part of a bigger trend where tech companies are trying to do more with less.
CFO Susan Li says costs will keep climbing into 2026 as they pour money into new tech and talent.