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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta Platforms, in July 2021.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Meta will report first-quarter results after the bell Wednesday.

Here’s what analysts are expecting.

  • Earnings per share: $4.32, according to LSEG.
  • Revenue: $36.16 billion, according to LSEG.
  • Daily active users (DAUs): 2.12 billion, according to StreetAccount
  • Monthly active users (MAUs): 3.09 billion, according to StreetAccount
  • Average revenue per user (ARPU): $11.75 according to StreetAccount

Meta has been a favorite on Wall Street since early 2023, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors it would be the “year of efficiency.” The stock almost tripled last year, trailing only Nvidia among members of the S&P 500, and is up another 40% in 2024.

The Facebook parent has been clawing back digital ad market share after a dismal 2022. At that time, the company was reeling from Apple’s iOS privacy update and macroeconomic concerns that led many brands to rein in spending.

Zuckerberg spearheaded an initiative to rebuild the ad business with a focus on artificial intelligence. On the company’s last earnings call in February, finance chief Susan Li said Meta has been investing in AI models that can accurately predict relevant ads for users, as well as tools that automate the ads-creation process. 

Analysts expect Meta to report a 26% increase in revenue from $28.65 billion a year earlier. That would mark the fastest rate of growth since the third quarter of 2021, which was before Apple’s privacy change started to show up on other companies’ balance sheets.

Meta is benefiting from a stabilizing economy and surge in spending from Chinese discount retailers like Temu and Shein, which have been pumping money into Facebook and company-owned Instagram in an effort to reach a wider swath of users. Analysts at Baird said in a Monday note that slower spending from China-based advertisers could be a source of concern in the first-quarter results. 

Temu still has 'a long way to go' in taking market share from larger incumbent e-commerce players

Still, the Baird analysts see continuing momentum for Meta, and said they have “reasonably high” expectations for the company because of its improving advertiser tools and success in short-form video monetization. 

Investors will remain focused on Meta’s costs, which have been central to the stock rally. Early last year, Zuckerberg said the company would be better at eliminating unnecessary projects and cracking down on bloat, which would help Meta become a “stronger and more nimble organization.” 

The company cut about 21,000 jobs in the first half of 2023, and Zuckerberg said in February of this year that hiring will be “relatively minimal compared to what we would have done historically.”

As of Dec. 31, Meta had a global workforce of 67,317, down from a peak of more than 87,000 employees in 2022, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Jefferies analysts wrote in a report last week that it’s “hard to argue with excellence.” The analysts expect Meta to beat on its first-quarter results and provide better-than-expected guidance for the second quarter. As of now, the average analyst estimate calls for revenue growth of 20% in the second quarter to $38.29 billion, according to LSEG.

“We continue to be encouraged by META’s ability to sustain double-digit rev growth, given the combination of higher engagement from AI investments, and increasing advertiser ROI & efficiency,” the Jefferies analysts wrote.

Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which houses the company’s hardware and software for development of the nascent metaverse, continues to bleed cash. Analysts expect the division to show an operating loss of $4.31 billion for the quarter, on top of the $42 billion it’s lost since the end of 2020. Revenue in the unit is projected to reach $512.5 million, a 51% increase from $339 million a year earlier.

Executives will discuss the company’s results on a call with analysts at 5 p.m. ET.

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Meta will generate more ad dollars than its competition, says Jefferies Brent Thill

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How China’s new AI model DeepSeek is threatening U.S. dominance

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How China’s new AI model DeepSeek is threatening U.S. dominance

A little-known AI lab out of China has ignited panic throughout Silicon Valley after releasing AI models that can outperform America’s best despite being built more cheaply and with less-powerful chips. 

DeepSeek, as the lab is called, unveiled a free, open-source large-language model in late December that it says took only two months and less than $6 million to build, using reduced-capability chips from Nvidia called H800s. 

The new developments have raised alarms on whether America’s global lead in artificial intelligence is shrinking and called into question big tech’s massive spend on building AI models and data centers. 

In a set of third-party benchmark tests, DeepSeek’s model outperformed Meta‘s Llama 3.1, OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5 in accuracy ranging from complex problem-solving to math and coding. 

DeepSeek on Monday released r1, a reasoning model that also outperformed OpenAI’s latest o1 in many of those third-party tests.

“To see the DeepSeek new model, it’s super impressive in terms of both how they have really effectively done an open-source model that does this inference-time compute, and is super-compute efficient,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday. “We should take the developments out of China very, very seriously.” 

DeepSeek also had to navigate the strict semiconductor restrictions that the U.S. government has imposed on China, cutting the country off from access to the most powerful chips, like Nvidia’s H100s. The latest advancements suggest DeepSeek either found a way to work around the rules, or that the export controls were not the chokehold Washington intended.

“They can take a really good, big model and use a process called distillation,” said Benchmark General Partner Chetan Puttagunta. “Basically you use a very large model to help your small model get smart at the thing you want it to get smart at. That’s actually very cost-efficient.”

Little is known about the lab and its founder, Liang WenFeng. DeepSeek was was born of a Chinese hedge fund called High-Flyer Quant that manages about $8 billion in assets, according to media reports.

But DeepSeek isn’t the only Chinese company making inroads. 

Leading AI researcher Kai-Fu Lee has said his startup 01.ai was trained using only $3 million. TikTok parent company ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its model that claims to outperform OpenAI’s o1 in a key benchmark test. 

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” said Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. “Because they had to figure out work-arounds, they actually ended up building something a lot more efficient.”

Watch this video to learn more. 

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Trump is searching for potential TikTok buyers — who are the likely contenders?

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Trump is searching for potential TikTok buyers — who are the likely contenders?

A 3D-printed miniature model of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and TikTok logo are seen in this illustration taken January 19, 2025.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

President Donald Trump wants a U.S. investor to take a major stake in ByteDance’s TikTok. Several parties are in contention even as potential buyers face a litany of legal hurdles and barriers.

After stepping in to restore TikTok in the U.S. and delaying a law that would effectively ban the app, Trump is looking for avenues to keep the popular platform afloat.

He has put forward a proposal for an American stakeholder to buy the company and then sell a 50% stake to the U.S. government, which will jointly run the app along with the private party. 

So, who are the likely contenders for one of the most popular apps in the U.S.?

Elon Musk 

Trump has already flagged several major investors within his inner circle as acceptable buyers, one of which is Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk. 

The world’s richest person is leading Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, has close business ties to China and has voiced opposition to the TikTok ban. 

Bloomberg reported earlier this month that the Chinese government was considering a plan to have Musk acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations, citing anonymous sources. That followed a report from the Wall Street Journal, which claimed TikTok’s CEO had been soliciting advice from Musk ahead of Trump’s inauguration. 

CNBC was unable to reach Musk for comment. 

“Elon Musk continues to be front and center as a potential bidder for TikTok which likely includes some tech partners/outside investors to get a deal done,” Wedbush said in a research note on Wednesday. 

“Musk would be hand picked by Beijing and his ironclad relationship with Trump would make this a very logical choice in our view,” the note added. 

Nat Schindler, an analyst at Scotiabank, also noted that Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has demonstrated his interest in global social media platforms. However, he also sees some potential obstacles for the tech tycoon. 

“Musk is under fire already for owning X and the perception that he is using it to promote certain political ideas, and any involvement in TikTok could draw additional fire and potentially antitrust scrutiny,” Schindler said. 

Larry Ellison

Trump has also said he’d “like” to see Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison purchase the platform.

Ellison, a longtime Trump supporter, stood beside the President at a press conference on his AI infrastructure investment plans on Tuesday, where Trump was asked questions about a potential TikTok deal. 

“What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it, and give half to the United States of America. Half and we’ll give you the permit,” Trump said before turning to Ellison to ask if the deal sounded reasonable.

“Sounds like a good deal to me Mr. President,” Ellison replied. 

Ellison and his company are currently at the center of the TikTok dilemma, operating as a cloud infrastructure provider for ByteDance in the U.S.

Given its existing relationship with Tiktok, Oracle and is “directly invested in Tiktok’s success in the region,” Scotiabank’s Schindler said. 

Ellison had bid for Tiktok, along with Walmart, back in 2020 when Trump first pushed for a ban on the platform. Neither company responded to CNBC’s request for comment. 

Trump had approved of the Walmart-Oracle deal in principle, which would’ve seen the tech and retail giants partner to take over the video-sharing app in the U.S., avoiding a shutdown. However, the Trump administration’s attempt to ban TikTok in the U.S. fell through in the face of legal challenges.

Ellison later joined a group of investors that helped Elon Musk buy social media platform Twitter, now known as X, in 2022. 

“[We believe] Oracle/Ellison could play a pivotal role in any deal given their key technology partnership with TikTok and his appearance at the White House with Project Stargate,” Wedbush said.

Wedbush added that it expects a slew of TikTok bids to come over the coming weeks from a host of players with Musk and Ellison leading the pack.

Big players, serious money 

In addition to Musk and Ellison, experts flagged several other parties likely to be interested in a potential deal for TikTok, adding that the barriers to entry were high. 

Given the financial stakes of a TikTok deal, it’s unlikely that some rogue investor is going to swoop in and buy the platform on the cheap, Paul Triolo of Albright Stone Group told CNBC. 

“While an up-to-date valuation on TikTok is difficult to come up with, it is likely to the order of $40-80 billion, meaning whoever decides to jump in has to be ready with some serious money,” he said. 

He added that potential suitors are likely to include some of America’s largest social media and technology players, such as Meta and Google, in addition to Musk’s X. 

Meta and Google didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC inquiry.

Sarah Kreps, the director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, however, warned that players such as Meta, Google and Musk getting a substantial stake in TikTok could raise antitrust questions.

Scotiabank analyst Nat Schindler noted that there were also a number of other players, including existing investors BlackRock, Coatue, and General Atlantic, who own a large chunk of TikTok’s parent company. According to him, some of these investors are likely to participate in any sale of the U.S. platform by investing in the new entity.

“Other large VCs, hedge funds, and asset managers from Tiger to Fidelity would also likely show interest in a fast growing global platform with such a huge viewer base,” said Schindler, adding that finding investors to own a part of Tiktok won’t be a problem.

MrBeast 

The fervor surrounding a purchase of TikTok U.S. has also seen some unconventional players enter the fray. 

Social media superstar MrBeast — real name Jimmy Donaldson — who has more than 100 million TikTok followers has posted several videos in which he indicated serious interest in buying the platform, claiming he has had talks with billionaires. 

In one video, the internet personality claimed he had an official offer ready, jesting that he might be the new TikTok CEO. 

Media reports have also mentioned Donaldson and a group of investors preparing to make a bid for TikTok. 

On Thursday, Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesperson for Donaldson, told CNBC that “Several potential buyers are in ongoing discussions with Jimmy, but he has no exclusive agreements with any of them.”

‘The People’s Bid for TikTok’

Led by Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt and involving Canadian businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary, “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” has made a $20 billion cash offer to buy TikTok. 

O’Leary told CNBC last year that he wanted to buy the platform at a discount as any possible deal won’t include TikTok’s original algorithm. The organization said it already has a replacement for the algorithm to use for TikTok U.S. 

Following Trump’s comments on a 50% stake in the platform, both McCourt and O’Leary told CNBC this week that they were interested in a TikTok deal and were hoping to work with Trump to make it happen. 

McCourt has also told CNBC that he wants TikTok to run a decentralized social networking protocol, or DSNP, overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, a nonprofit founded by the billionaire.

Bidding interest aside, a number of legal and tech experts have told CNBC that Trump’s executive order to delay the TikTok ban contradicts the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling to uphold the PAFACA and could face legal opposition.

O’Leary also told CNBC on Monday that a TikTok deal could not happen under the current law, after the Supreme Court upheld an impending ban on TikTok under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, or PAFACA, on Sunday. 

Beijing and its pending negotiations with Trump regarding trade with the U.S. is also expected to play a determining factor in whether the Chinese government would allow ByteDance to make a divestiture.

“In this game of high stakes poker between the Trump Administration and Beijing it’s clear TikTok is a big chip on the table,” Wedush said

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Tesla starts sales of revamped Model Y in U.S. for about $60,000

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Tesla starts sales of revamped Model Y in U.S. for about ,000

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Tesla will start deliveries of a revamped version of its Model Y SUV in the U.S. in March, according to new listings on the company’s website.

The Model Y Juniper has a price tag of $59,990, not including a federal tax credit of $7,500 for new electric vehicle purchases. It features a redesigned fascia, front and rear light bars and an upgraded interior with ventilated seats, reclining second-row seats and faster Wi-Fi, the website shows.

Tesla began taking orders for the new Model Y variant from customers in Canada and Europe on Thursday, and started sales in China about two weeks ago. CEO Elon Musk shared a video from the Tesla account on X Thursday night showing off the new Model Y.

Tesla is looking to revitalize its core automotive business, which faces increased competition across the globe. Executives are expected to discuss Tesla’s fourth-quarter and year-end results on Wednesday after markets close.

Tesla’s last new model, the angular steel Cybertruck, began rolling out to customers at the end of 2023. While it became the best-selling electric truck in the U.S. last year, sales didn’t make up for a decline in overall deliveries, which fell for the first time in 2024.

Musk, who also runs SpaceX and owns social media site X, has been at the center of attention in recent months because of his hefty financing of President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and his position in the newly elected president’s inner circle.

After his inauguration on Monday to begin his second White House term, President Trump signed an executive order indicating he will likely repeal the federal electric vehicle tax credit, which was approved by Congress during the Biden administration as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Tesla has long benefited from the government-supported incentives, but ending the credits will likely have a more harmful impact on competitors in the EV market.

Prior to the release of the new Model Y variant, Musk’s political rhetoric, along with Tesla’s aging lineup, had led to a decline in the company’s reputation according to research from Brand Finance.

WATCH: Here’s why Bank of America downgraded Tesla to neutra

Tesla: Here's why Bank of America downgraded the stock to neutral

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