Meta vs. Snap: What Do Their Quarterly Revenue Trends Tell Investors?

Meta Platforms: Evaluating Revenue Expansion

Meta Platforms (META 1.20%) primarily generates revenue through advertising, and by offering digital communication applications and virtual reality hardware to users worldwide.

It recently expanded an infrastructure partnership with Broadcom to develop custom hardware for its operations, and it reported an approximately 48% net income margin for the quarter ended March 31, 2026.

Snap: Navigating Revenue Fluctuations

Snap (SNAP 1.21%) operates a visual communication application and provides wearable camera products and advertising services globally.

It announced a strategic agreement with Qualcomm to power future generations of its wearable hardware, while posting an approximately negative 6% net income margin for the quarter ended March 31, 2026.

Why Revenue Matters for Retail Investors

Revenue serves as a foundational metric that shows investors the total amount of money a business brings in before operating expenses are deducted. This helps investors gauge raw business scale and growth.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Quarterly Revenue for Meta Platforms and Snap

Data source: Company filings. Data as of May 10, 2026.

Foolish Take

Comparing the revenue for Meta Platforms and Snap reveals insightful trends. Both operate in the social media space, rely heavily on digital advertising for income, and are experiencing rising revenue. Beyond that, their stories diverge.

Meta is seeing spectacular sales growth. Its first quarter revenue of $56.3 billion represented a 33% year-over-year jump. Compare that to Snap’s 12% Q1 sales increase to $1.5 billion, which is a solid result, but not the outsized performance delivered by Meta.

The Facebook parent’s enormous revenue increase shows its business strategies are working. Meta invested heavily in artificial intelligence in recent years, and its strong sales suggests AI is helping.

The company has also extended its AI use into hardware with virtual reality headsets and AI-infused sunglasses. The latter saw the number of people using them triple year over year in Q1.

Snap’s sales trend indicates the company is growing. Its daily active users rose 5% year over year in Q1.

However, unlike Meta, Snap isn’t profitable, posting a Q1 net loss of $89 million. Its modest revenue gains contrasted against unprofitable operations is concerning when AI is expensive technology to implement.

Snap’s sales trend reveals its use of AI to date hasn’t supercharged its income to the same degree as Meta. Unless revenue starts to accelerate, as an unprofitable enterprise, investing in Snap stock is not as appealing as owning shares in Meta.