Meta Platforms earnings reveal surprising 2025 forecast

Meta Platforms shares moved higher in after-hours trading after the social media giant posted stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings but declined to provide a full-year sales outlook amid its planned increase in capital spending.

Facebook parent Meta (META) , which revealed last week it plans to spend between $60 and $65 billion on AI-related projects this year, said it sees March-quarter earnings of between $39.5 billion and $41.8 billion, just shy of Street forecasts. However, it wouldn't provide investors with a full-year outlook.

Overall costs, Meta said, would likely rise to between $114 billion and $119 billion, with "the single largest driver of expense growth in 2025 to be infrastructure costs."

Snapshot of a strong $META quarter: pic.twitter.com/4G6ExT3j6H
— Brad Freeman (@StockMarketNerd) January 29, 2025

"While we are not providing a full year 2025 revenue outlook, we expect the investments we are making in our core business this year will give us an opportunity to continue delivering strong revenue growth throughout 2025," Meta said in a statement issued alongside its earnings release.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the group's new AI agent, Llama 4, "will become the leading state of the art model" in the global AI race.
Bloomberg/Getty Images

That could raise concerns regarding the group's increased capital spending plans, unveiled last week by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, following the emergence of DeepSeek's AI-powered chatbot.

DeepSeek threat to Meta AI

DeepSeek, a China-based startup, claims its newest version of the AI agent was built and developed for less than $6 million, a fraction of the $500 million reportedly spent by Meta on its Llama 3 system.

That development challenged the tech market's narrative that billions in data center and GPU investments are needed to develop, train and deploy new AI technologies.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called DeepSeek's model "impressive," adding in a post on X that it is "legit invigorating to have a new competitor."

Meta earned $8.02 per share, or $20.84 billion, over the three months ending in December, handily topping Wall Street's $6.77 per share forecast, as revenues jumped 20.5% from the year-ago period to $48.35 billion.

Last week, Zuckerberg said Meta hat Meta would likely spend between $60 billion and $65 billion on capital projects this year, a $32 billion increase from 2024 levels and well ahead of the Street's consensus forecast of around $51 billion.

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"I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people, Llama 4 will become the leading state of the art model," he said in Facebook post. "This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership."

Meta Platforms shares were marked 2.14% higher in after-hours trading immediately following the earnings release to indicate a Thursday opening bell price of $691.05 each.

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