Meta to report first-quarter earnings after the bell
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta is set to report its first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, and investors will be looking for any signs that President Donald Trump’s tough China tariffs are affecting the company’s online ads business.
Here is what analysts polled by LSEG are expecting:
- Earnings per share: $5.28 expected
- Revenue: $41.39 billion expected
Analysts expect Meta’s China-derived advertising business to feel the most pain from Trump’s tariffs. Online retailers such as Temu and Shein are slashing their U.S. ad spending, and China represented 11%, or $18.35 billion, of the Facebook parent’s total 2024 sales.
Meta’s 2025 advertising revenue could be affected by $7 billion if those China-linked companies continue shrinking their digital ad spending as a response to the U.S.-China trade dispute, MoffettNathanson analysts said in a research note published last week.
Analysts expect Meta to post $8.54 billion in Asia-Pacific sales for the quarter.
When Google reported first-quarter earnings last Thursday, company executives told analysts that it is likely the search giant will experience headwinds to its online ad business stemming from Asia. Regarding the broader economy, Google Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said “it’s still too early in the second quarter to have a more specific view of things.”
Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner sounded more dire about the effect of U.S. trade policies on the economy when the chip giant on Thursday reported first-quarter earnings and issued weak guidance.
“The very fluid trade policies in the U.S. and beyond, as well as regulatory risks, have increased the chance of an economic slowdown, with the probability of a recession growing,” Zinsner said during an earnings call.
Investors will also be monitoring whether Trump’s tariffs will affect Meta’s big spending on artificial intelligence. Analysts expect Meta to log $14.32 billion in capital expenditures for the quarter.
Meta is expected to report 3.39 billion daily active people for the first quarter, according to analyst estimates.
Snap, which also relies on online advertising, reported its first-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Its stock price plunged after the company said it couldn’t provide forward guidance due to macroeconomic uncertainties.
followed by Reddit and Amazon on Thursday.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In the weeks leading up to Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings report, investors debated whether the markets were in an AI bubble, fretting over the massive sums being committed to building data centers and whether they could provide a long-term return on investment.
During Wednesday’s earnings call with analysts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang began his comments by rejecting that premise.
“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Huang said. “From our vantage point we see something very different.”
In many respects, Huang’s remarks are to be expected. He’s leading the company at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom, and has built its market cap to $4.5 trillion because of soaring demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
Huang’s smackdown of bubble talk matters because Nvidia counts every major cloud provider — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle — as a customer. Most of the major AI model developers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Meta, are also big buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
Huang has deep visibility into the market, and on the call he offered a three-pronged argument for why we’re not in a bubble.
First, he said that areas like data processing, ad recommendations, search systems, and engineering, are turning to GPUs because they need the AI. That means older computing infrastructure based around the central processor will transition to new systems running on Nvidia’s chips.
Second, Huang said, AI isn’t just being integrated into current applications, but it will enable entirely new ones.
Finally, according to Huang, “agentic AI,” or applications that can run without significant input from the user, will be able to reason and plan, and will require even more computing power.
In making the case of Nvidia, Huang said it’s the only company that can address the three use cases.
“As you consider infrastructure investments, consider these three fundamental dynamics,” Huang said. “Each will contribute to infrastructure growth in the coming years.”
Reversing the slide
In its earnings release, Nvidia reported revenue and profit that sailed past estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance. Last month, Huang provided a $500 billion forecast for sales of the company’s AI chips over calendar 2025 and 2026.
The company said on Wednesday that its order backlog didn’t even include a few recent deals, like an agreement with Anthropic that was announced this week or the expansion of a deal with Saudi Arabia.
“The number will grow,” CFO Colette Kress said on the call, saying the company was on track to hit the forecast.
Prior to Wednesday’s results, Nvidia shares were down about 8% this month. Other stocks tied to the AI have gotten hit even harder, with CoreWeave plunging 44% in November, Oracle dropping 14% and Palantir falling 17%.
Some of the worry on Wall Street has been tied to the debt that certain companies have used to finance their infrastructure buildouts.
“Our customers’ financing is up to them,” Huang said.
Specific to Nvidia, investors have raised concerns in recent weeks about how much of the company’s sales were going to a small number of hyperscalers.
Last month, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet all lifted their forecasts for capital expenditures due to their AI buildouts, and now collectively expect to spend more than $380 billion this year.
Huang said that even without a new business model, Nvidia’s chips boost hyperscaler revenue, because they power recommendation systems for short videos, books, and ads.
People will soon start appreciating what’s happening underneath the surface of the AI boom, Huang said, versus “the simplistic view of what’s happening to capex and investment.”
WATCH: Nvidia posts Q3 beat
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