Meta revenue increases by 33%, surpassing expectations; full-year capital expenditure raised to $145 billion

CryptoWorld News reports that Meta announced its first-quarter financial results. Revenue was $56.31 billion, up 33% year over year, exceeding Wall Street’s forecast of $55.45 billion. Adjusted earnings per share were $7.31, higher than the expected $6.79.

The reported profit includes a one-time tax benefit of $8.03 billion, coming from new U.S. Department of the Treasury rules introduced this February that simplify the corporate alternative minimum tax. This partially offsets the $15.93 billion in taxes incurred last year due to the tax-cut legislation.

Although both revenue and profit beat expectations, the stock fell by about 7% after hours. The core reason was that capital expenditures were ramped up again. Meta raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance from $115 billion–$135 billion to $125 billion–$145 billion, which is $10 billion higher than the previous figure.

Actual full-year capital spending for 2025 was $72.2 billion—nearly doubling within a year. CFO Susan Li said the increase in guidance was due to higher component prices and additional demand for building new data centers, and during the call she said, “So far, we have been underestimating compute demand.”

As of the end of March, the total number of employees was 77,986. Q2 revenue guidance is $58.0 billion to $61.0 billion, roughly in line with analysts’ expectations.