Meta Q4 Earnings Up 11%, Top Wall Street Expectations

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The company’s platforms also saw a 7% increase in daily usage in December

January 28, 2026 @ 1:20 PM

(Photo illustration by TheWrap)

Meta reported a 24% increase in revenue year-over-year for its fourth quarter. Its earnings per share also outpaced Wall Street estimates by nearly 9%.

The tech giant generated $59.9 billion in revenue for the quarter, beating Wall Street expectations. Meta also reported its earnings per share at $8.88, surpassing analysts’ $8.16 estimate.

Meta is guiding for capital expense of $115-135 billion, which is below Wall Street’s projected range of $150 billion. The company spent heavily in 2025 on investment in infrastructure to support its lofty AI ambitions.

“We had strong business performance in 2025,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO, said. “I’m looking forward to advancing personal superintelligence for people around the world in 2026.”

Here are the key results from Meta’s fourth quarter report:

Revenue: Meta reported $59.9 billion in fourth quarter sales, up 24% annually, outpacing the $58.4 billion analysts had projected.

Most of the company’s revenue came from advertising.

Net income: The company reported $22.8 billion in net income, a 9% increase from the fourth quarter in 2024.

Daily active users: Meta reported 3.58 billion daily active users for December 2025 across its apps Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads — an increase of 7% year-over-year.

Earnings Per Share: $8.88, which surpassed the $8.16 estimate EPS analysts projected.

The company expected fourth-quarter total revenue to be in the range of $56-59 billion. Analysts project that the company’s revenue will be $58.4 billion and $8.16 EPS.

The second-largest contributor to total expense growth for the company was employee compensation, driven by investments in AI including the acquisition of Scale AI and the hiring of its CEO Alexandr Wang to serve as Meta’s chief AI officer and run its Superintelligence Labs.

Meta CFO Susan Li noted that, as part of the company’s AI buildout efforts, they have signed multiyear deal of up to $6 billion with Corning to supply fiber-optic cables for its data centers.

Meta AI is available in over 200 markets, Li said on the earnings call Wednesday.

“We see a lot of opportunity to make it easier for people to accomplish the tasks that they already come to our services for every day,” she said. “If we do that well, then the way people use our products will continue to expand. So we’re focused on making meta AI the most personalized assistant, while tapping into the vast amount of information, trends and content from our platform to offer differentiated insights.”

Zuckerberg was specifically excited for the company’s growth in wearables, including Meta AI glasses. Sales of the company’s glasses more than tripled last year, and the Meta founder said he sees it as one of the fastest growing consumer electronics in history.

“I think that we’re at a moment similar to when smartphones arrived, and it was clearly only a matter of time until all those flip phones became smartphones,” he explained on the earnings call. “It’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren’t AI glasses for Reality Labs.”

Reality Labs has yet to make a profit for the company and laid off 1,500 employees, about 10% of its staff, earlier this month. The division focused on developing hardware, software and research for augmented reality and virtual reality reported a $6 billion income loss for the fourth quarter. The earnings reported noted that it expects Reality Labs to operate at a similar loss in 2026.

Meta’s Q3 earnings report reflected an effective tax rate of 87% because of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Meta expected the fourth-quarter tax rate to be 12-15%. The actual tax rate for the fourth quarter was 10%.

As of the end of 2025, Meta had 78,865 employees, up 6% year over year.

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