Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., center, departs from federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Dec. 20, 2022.
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Meta shares jumped 12% in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported an unexpected increase in sales for the first quarter and issued better-than-expected guidance for the current period.
Here are the key numbers:
Earnings: $2.20 per share.
Revenue: $28.65 billion vs $27.65 billion expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
Daily Active Users (DAUs): $2.04 billion vs $2.01 billion expected, according to StreetAccount.
Monthly Active Users (MAUs): $2.99 billion vs $2.99 billion expected, according to StreetAccount.
Average Revenue per User (ARPU): $9.62 vs $9.30 expected, according to StreetAccount.
Meta’s first-quarter sales rose 3% from $27.91 billion a year earlier, after three straight periods in which revenue declined. It wasn’t immediately clear if the company’s figure was comparable to analyst projections of $2.03.
For the second quarter, Meta expects revenue of between $29.5 billion and $32 billion, while analysts were expecting sales of $29.5 billion, according to Refinitiv.
“We had a good quarter and our community continues to grow,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. The company is “becoming more efficient so we can build better products faster and put ourselves in a stronger position to deliver our long term vision,” he said.
Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which is developing the virtual reality and augmented reality technologies for the metaverse, brought in $339 million in sales but logged an operating loss of $3.99 billion. The company added that operating losses in Reality Labs will increase this year.
Net income companywide fell 23% to $5.7 billion, or $2.20 per share, from $7.47 billion, or $2.72 per share, in the same quarter last year.
Meta said that total expenses for 2023 will be in the range of $86 billion to $90 billion. That figure includes restructuring costs that range between $3 billion to $5 billion.
Capital expenditures will remain in the range of $30 billion to 33 billion. That figure accounts for its increased artificial intelligence investments and its ad-supported products like the newsfeed and Reels, the company said.
The after-market rally further boosted a stock that’s been on an upward trend since Zuckerberg announced in February that 2023 would be the company’s “year of efficiency.”
The shares lost two-thirds of their value in 2022, but were up 74% this year, prior to the earnings report. Including the post-report surge on Wednesday to over $234, the shares are up about 164% from their November 2022 low of around $89.
Investors have rallied around Zuckerberg’s plans to slim down his company through a series of layoffs, resulting in some 21,000 expected job cuts. The revenue base had been shrinking from a battered online advertising market and the lingering effects of Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update that dramatically limited ad targeting capabilities.
Google parent Alphabet, which dominates the online ad market along with Meta, reported first-quarter results on Tuesday that beat analysts’ expectations, though ad revenue fell from the prior year.
Executives will address analysts and investors on an earnings call beginning at 5 p.m. ET.
The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025.
Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images
Shares of SoftBank Group plunged as much as 9.17% Wednesday, as technology stocks in Asia declined, tracking losses in U.S. peers overnight.
The Japanese tech-focused investment firm saw shares drop for a second consecutive session, following its announcement of a $2 billion investment in Intel. Intel shares rose 6.97% to close at $25.31 Tuesday stateside.
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SoftBank Group shares
Other Japanese tech stocks also declined, with semiconductor giant Advantest falling as much as 6.27%. Meanwhile, shares in Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron were last seen trading 2.46% and 0.75% lower, respectively.
Technology companies in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also fell after U.S. tech stocks dropped overnight spurred by declines in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is considering the federal government taking equity stakes in semiconductor companies that get funding under the CHIPS Act for building plants in the U.S, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act seeks to boost the country’s semiconductor industry, scientific research and innovation.
Shares of Taiwanese chip company TSMC and manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry — known globally as Foxconn — declined 1.69% and 2.16%, respectively. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units that help power large language models, while Foxconn has a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build “AI factories.”
Meanwhile, South Korean tech stocks mostly fell with shares of chipmaker SK Hynix down 3.33%. Samsung Electronics, however, rose 0.75%.
TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix are among companies that have received funding under the CHIPS Act.
Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Tech index lost 0.87% in early trade.
CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 15, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
Palantir‘s stock slumped more than 9% on Tuesday, falling for a fifth straight day to continue its pullback from all-time highs.
The artificial intelligence software provider’s stock has slid more than 15% over the last five trading sessions, after a stellar earnings report earlier this month propelled shares to all-time highs. The report was Palantir’s first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter.
Tuesday’s dip coincided with a broader market pullback.
Palantir is the most significant gainer to date in the S&P 500 in 2025, up more than 100%.
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Shares have more than doubled as the company benefits from ongoing AI enthusiasm, scooping up government contracts with President Donald Trump pushing to overhaul agencies.
Palantir’s ascent has pushed the company into a list of top 10 U.S. tech firms and 20 most valuable U.S. companies, while also making shares incredibly expensive to own. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio, which tracks future earnings relative to share price, has soared past 245 times.
By comparison, technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple carry a P/E of nearly 30 times and rake in significantly greater quarterly revenues. Meta‘s and Alphabet‘s P/E ratios hover in the 20s.
The data analytics software vendor said Tuesday that it’s raising a funding round that values the company at over $100 billion. That would make Databricks just the fourth private company to eclipse the $100 billion mark, following SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI, according to data from CB Insights.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that the total round will exceed $1 billion. The company was last valued by private investors at $62 billion in a $10 billion financing round late last year.
In June, Databricks executives told investors the company was forecasting $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with 50% year-over-year growth.
Snowflake, one of Databricks’ top rivals, is expected to generate $4.5 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January, representing annual growth of 25%, according to LSEG. Snowflake currently has a market cap of about $65 billion. Other competitors include cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also Databricks partners.
Ghodsi said he heard from a lot of interested investors following Figma’s IPO late last month. Shares of the design software company more than tripled in their New York Stock Exchange debut, a sign that public investors are seeking out tech offerings after in extended lull in the IPO market.
“My phone was blowing up,” Ghodsi said on Tuesday. “So yes, there’s definitely been a big push from outside.”
Figma shares have since retreated from their initial $115.50 closing price. The stock is trading at about $70, still more than double the $33 IPO price.
Ghodsi said the round will help Databricks invest in products that clients can tap when using artificial intelligence models.
Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list. As of June, the company employed 8,000 people. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management are buying shares, a spokesperson said.