Meta could be getting ready to post its highest revenue growth since 2021
Meta’s outlook and analyst estimates suggest more than 30% revenue growth in Q1.
When Meta reports first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, analysts and Meta itself expect that its revenue could rise more than 30% — the company’s biggest year-over-year jump since 2021.
FactSet estimates call for $55.6 billion in revenue. Meta itself guided for between $53.5 billion and $56.5 billion, up from $42.3 billion a year earlier, as AI helps extract more value from the social media giant’s massive advertising business.
Meta is expected to surpass even Google in net ad revenue this year. The company is also slated to post earnings per share of $6.67, up from $6.43 a year earlier.
However, those gains are coming with very aggressive AI spending. Meta expects its 2026 capex to be between $115 billion and $135 billion, much higher than analysts had expected and nearly double what it was in 2025.
As CFO Susan Li put it during the fourth-quarter earnings call, “We expect the set of investments we’re making in 2026 will enable us to drive further gains as we continue to integrate AI across all layers of the marketing and customer engagement funnel.”
Those expectations, however, were set before China blocked Meta’s acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus. Meta had hoped to incorporate Manus’ technology into its own tools and scale its subscription revenue, creating a new stream of income beyond advertising — something Meta lacks as it ramps spending. Unlike the hyperscalers also spending heavily on AI, Meta doesn’t sell that capacity to others to offset costs.
