Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) — Company Research

Last Updated: 3 September 2026

Meta Platforms runs the largest advertising audience ever assembled — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads reach 3.60 billion people a day — and is currently spending the profits from that audience on an artificial-intelligence build-out of unprecedented scale. FY2025 revenue reached $200,966m and free cash flow $43,585m; in the first half of 2026 free cash flow all but disappeared as capital expenditure overtook the cash the advertising business generates. Two things dominate the story as at September 2026: a capital-expenditure programme guided at $130–145bn for 2026 alone, and a teen-safety settlement agreed on 26 August 2026 worth up to $18bn. This report sets out what the filings say, without ratings or price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	META — Nasdaq Global Select Market
Headquarters	Menlo Park, California, United States
Founded / listed	Founded 2004; IPO May 2012. Never split its stock
CEO / Leadership	Mark Zuckerberg (founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer); Susan Li, Chief Financial Officer; Javier Olivan, Chief Operating Officer; Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer; Alexandr Wang, Chief AI Officer
Employees	75,472 as at 30 June 2026 (down 1% year on year; still includes approximately 8,000 staff affected by the May 2026 reduction)
Fiscal year end	31 December
Latest reported period	Q2 2026, quarter ended 30 June 2026, released 29 July 2026
Revenue (FY2025)	$200,966m, up 22.2% year on year
Net income (FY2025)	$60,458m
GAAP diluted EPS (FY2025)	$23.49
Share price	$592.85 (close, 2 September 2026)
Market capitalisation	Approximately $1.510 trillion, on roughly 2,548m Class A and Class B shares combined
Dividend	$0.525 per quarter; $2.10 annualised. Initiated February 2024
Share structure	Dual class. Approximately 2,206m Class A and 342m Class B at 30 June 2026; Class B carries ten votes per share

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• The advertising engine is still accelerating: revenue grew 22.2% in FY2025 and 28% in Q2 2026, with ad impressions up 14% and average price per ad up 12% in the quarter — monetisation, not just audience, is doing the work.
• Unmatched reach at low cost of acquisition: 3.60 billion daily active people across the Family of Apps in June 2026, an audience Meta already owns and does not have to buy.
• AI is already visible in the numbers, not just the narrative: Advantage+ end-to-end solutions passed a $75bn annual revenue run rate, the GEM ranking model and sequence learning drove 8.3% more ad clicks and 15.7% more conversions on Facebook, and 9 million small businesses now use at least one Meta AI ad creative tool.
• New revenue lines are compounding off a small base: Family of Apps "Other revenue" rose 73% year on year to $1,007m in Q2 2026 on WhatsApp paid messaging and subscriptions, Threads passed 500 million monthly users, and Meta shipped over 7 million AI glasses in 2025 against roughly 2 million across 2023 and 2024 combined.
• The biggest legal overhang has now been priced and dated: the 26 August 2026 multistate settlement converts an open-ended liability into a defined payment schedule spread over ten years, of which $5.3bn is contingent on competitors matching the same protections.

Bear Case

• Free cash flow has effectively gone to zero: Q2 2026 free cash flow was $784m against $8,549m a year earlier, a 91% fall, because purchases of property and equipment rose 82% while operating cash flow rose 25%.
• Buybacks have stopped entirely: nil repurchases in Q2 2026 and nil in H1 2026, against $10,167m and $22,921m in the comparable 2025 periods. The shareholder return that supported the share count has been switched off.
• Debt is building fast and pricing worse: long-term debt went from $18,385m at FY2023 to $83,664m at 30 June 2026. The $25bn April/May 2026 issue drew $96bn of orders against $125bn six months earlier and priced wider on nearly every tranche.
• Legal cost is now recurring, not exceptional: $2.40bn of legal charges were booked in Q2 2026, an accrual of approximately $10bn is expected in Q3 2026, and the New Mexico Attorney General trial beginning 8 September 2026 is not covered by the multistate settlement.
• Near-total dependence on one revenue line: advertising was $196,175m of $200,966m FY2025 revenue, or 97.6%, and the same 97.6% in Q2 2026. There is no second business large enough to absorb an advertising downturn.

3. Business Segments

Meta reports two segments. The disclosed revenue lines within them, for FY2025, are set out below.

Segment / revenue line	% of revenue	What it is
Family of Apps — Advertising	97.6% ($196,175m)	Ads sold across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads. Priced by auction; revenue is a function of impressions delivered and average price per ad, which rose 12% and 9% respectively across FY2025.
Family of Apps — Other revenue	1.3% ($2,584m)	WhatsApp Business paid messaging, subscriptions including Meta Verified, and other non-advertising app revenue. The fastest-growing line, up 73% year on year in Q2 2026.
Reality Labs	1.1% ($2,207m)	Quest headsets, Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta AI glasses, the new own-brand Meta Glasses line, and metaverse software. Reported an operating loss of $19,193m in FY2025.

The segment split understates how lopsided the economics are. Family of Apps produced $102,469m of operating income in FY2025 while Reality Labs lost $19,193m on $2,207m of revenue — roughly $8.70 of loss for every $1 of revenue. In January 2026 Reality Labs was reorganised into two divisions under Andrew Bosworth, Metaverse under Vishal Shah and Wearables under Alex Himel, with approximately 1,500 roles cut.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Meta gives its products away and sells the attention. Advertisers bid in a real-time auction for placements across five apps; Meta takes the clearing price. Because the products are free, growth in revenue comes from two levers only — more ad impressions delivered, and a higher price per ad. In Q2 2026 both moved together, impressions up 14% and price per ad up 12%, which is why revenue grew 28% while daily active people grew only 3%.

Why it is hard to dislodge. The moat is the combination of scale and measurement. An advertiser reaching 3.60 billion daily users through one buying interface has no substitute of comparable size, and Meta's ranking and retrieval models — Andromeda for retrieval, the Generative Recommender and GEM for ranking — improve as more advertisers and more conversions flow through them. That is a data feedback loop a smaller network cannot replicate. Network effects on the consumer side are separate and equally durable: Meta's applications are where a user's contacts already are.

Where the model is being stress-tested. Meta is now converting an extremely high-margin advertising business into a capital-intensive one. FY2026 capital expenditure including finance leases is guided at $130–145bn against FY2025's $72.22bn, and non-cancellable contractual commitments stood at $349.31bn at 30 June 2026 with a further approximately $68bn of data centre leases signed in July. Depreciation on that base flows into future cost of revenue whether or not the AI products it funds generate incremental advertising dollars.

Who controls it. Mark Zuckerberg retains voting control through Class B shares carrying ten votes each. Strategic decisions of the scale now being taken — the pivot from open-weight Llama models to the closed Muse family, the suspension of buybacks, the multi-year capital programme — do not require the approval of outside shareholders.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Meta's quarterly earnings releases, its Form 10-K for FY2025 filed 29 January 2026, and the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026. Meta's fiscal year is the calendar year.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	117,929	+37.2%	$13.77	$13.77†	Nil	$0m
FY2022	116,609	−1.1%	$8.59	$8.59†	Nil	$9,923m
FY2023	134,902	+15.7%	$14.87	$14.87†	Nil	$18,385m
FY2024	164,501	+21.9%	$23.86	$23.86†	$2.00	$28,826m
FY2025	200,966	+22.2%	$23.49	$23.49†	$2.10	$58,744m

† Meta publishes no adjusted or non-GAAP earnings per share in any year. Its only non-GAAP measures are revenue excluding foreign exchange, advertising revenue excluding foreign exchange, and free cash flow. GAAP diluted EPS is repeated in the Adjusted EPS column for completeness; any "adjusted" Meta EPS quoted elsewhere is an analyst construction, not a company disclosure.

Two features of that table need explaining. Long-term debt was nil until Meta's first bond issue in August 2022 and has since risen more than sixfold; it reached $83,664m at 30 June 2026 after a $25bn issue in April and May 2026, against $59,000m of face value at the end of 2025. And FY2025 EPS fell 2% despite revenue rising 22.2%, because a $15.93bn non-cash tax charge on enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act pushed the FY2025 effective tax rate to 30% against 12% in FY2024. Meta states that absent the valuation-allowance charge the FY2025 rate would have been 13%.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026 (ended 30 Jun 2026)	$60,801m	$6.18†	$6.18
Q1 2026 (ended 31 Mar 2026)	$56,311m	$10.44†	$10.44
Q4 2025 (ended 31 Dec 2025)	$59,893m	$8.88†	$8.88
Q3 2025 (ended 30 Sep 2025)	$51,242m	$1.05†	$1.05
Q2 2025 (ended 30 Jun 2025)	$47,516m	$7.14†	$7.14
FY2025 full year	$200,966m	$23.49†	$23.49

The quarterly GAAP earnings series is currently a poor guide to underlying profitability in both directions. Q3 2025 EPS of $1.05 carried the $15.93bn tax charge. Q1 2026 EPS of $10.44 carried an $8.03bn tax benefit arising from US Treasury Notice 2026-7; Meta states EPS would have been $3.13 lower, at $7.31, without it, and the reported effective rate was negative 23%. Q2 2026 EPS of $6.18 absorbed $2.40bn of legal charges and $1.18bn of severance for the May 2026 headcount reduction; Susan Li said that excluding both, operating income would have risen approximately 9% rather than falling 8%.

Key cash flow and balance sheet items, from the FY2025 Form 10-K and the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q: operating cash flow $115,800m in FY2025 and $64,088m in H1 2026; purchases of property and equipment $69,691m in FY2025 and $49,113m in H1 2026; principal payments on finance leases $2,524m and $1,805m; depreciation and amortisation $18,616m and $12,355m; operating income $83,276m and $41,647m. Cash and marketable securities stood at $81,592m at 31 December 2025 and $90,260m at 30 June 2026. Meta presents no current portion of long-term debt; the only current debt-like item is a $308m finance lease liability sitting inside accrued expenses. Restricted cash within other assets rose from $2,390m at FY2025 to $13,107m at 30 June 2026, tied to the data centre financings.

Guidance issued on 29 July 2026: Q3 2026 revenue of $61–64bn; FY2026 total expenses of $165–169bn; FY2026 capital expenditure including principal payments on finance leases of $130–145bn; a tax rate of 15–17% for the remaining quarters. Meta expects FY2026 operating income to exceed FY2025 operating income. On 26 August 2026 Meta said separately that it expects to accrue approximately $10bn of legal expense in Q3 2026, which was not contemplated in the July expense outlook.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, September 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	Approximately $1,510bn at $592.85 (close, 2 September 2026), on roughly 2,548m Class A and Class B shares. Feeds quoting only the 2,206m Class A count understate the figure by about 13%
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	Approximately 22.3x on trailing twelve-month diluted EPS of $26.55 (Q3 2025 $1.05 + Q4 2025 $8.88 + Q1 2026 $10.44 + Q2 2026 $6.18). On FY2025 GAAP EPS of $23.49 the multiple is 25.2x. Both bases are distorted by the tax items described in Section 5 — a $15.93bn charge in Q3 2025 and an $8.03bn benefit in Q1 2026 — which roughly offset over the trailing year but make any single quarter unusable
P/E (forward)	Approximately 17.0x, on a forward earnings estimate of roughly $34.96 per share
P/S (TTM)	6.6x (market cap ~$1,510bn / trailing twelve-month revenue $228,247m, being Q3 2025 to Q2 2026 inclusive)
Enterprise value	Approximately $1,504bn (market cap ~$1,510bn + total debt ~$83.7bn − cash and marketable securities ~$90.3bn, per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet). Meta presents no current portion of long-term debt. This excludes the Blue Owl and BlackRock data centre joint-venture vehicles, which are off balance sheet
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	Approximately 13.7x (EV ~$1,504bn / trailing twelve-month EBITDA ~$109.7bn). EBITDA is operating income plus depreciation and amortisation; a hand-built figure from FY2025 operating income of $83,276m adjusted for the half-year movements gives approximately $107bn, within 2% of the market-data figure used here. Meta reports a single combined depreciation and amortisation line, so there is no narrow-versus-wide choice to make
P/FCF	Approximately 34.7x on FY2025 free cash flow (market cap ~$1,510bn / FCF ~$43.6bn; FCF = operating cash flow $115,800m − purchases of property and equipment $69,691m − principal payments on finance leases $2,524m, per the FY2025 cash flow statement). On trailing figures the multiple is far higher and close to meaningless: H1 2026 free cash flow was $13,170m and Q2 2026 alone $784m
52-week high	$790.80
52-week low	$520.26
Short interest (% of float)	1.27% (28,048,106 shares short against a Class A float of approximately 2,202m, settlement date 14 August 2026). A second vendor, Fintel, reports 32,561,725 shares and 1.49% for a comparable period; both point to a negligible position
Days to cover	1.73 days on the 14 August 2026 settlement figures (Fintel: 2.30 days). Average daily volume is approximately 18.1m shares over three months

You can put these numbers against the price action on the ChartsView Live Charts page.

7. What Are They Building

A closed frontier-model family. Meta Superintelligence Labs, founded 30 June 2025 and led by Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, launched Muse Spark on 8 April 2026 — the first model from a stack Meta says it rebuilt from the ground up over nine months. Muse Spark is closed-weight and available in private preview by API, a decisive break from the open Llama line; no new Llama model has been released in 2026, leaving Llama 4 of April 2025 as the last. The family has since extended to Muse Image on 7 July 2026, Muse Spark 1.1 with a public Meta Model API on 9 July, Muse Spark 1.2 with a 1M-token context on 5 August, Muse Glimmer — a 30B dense multimodal model released under Apache 2.0 with open weights — on 10 August, and Muse Spark 1.3 in early September. Zuckerberg said on the Q2 call that rebuilding Meta AI on Muse Spark produced a 60% increase in daily users of the assistant.

Gigawatt-scale compute. Prometheus in New Albany, Ohio is billed as the first gigawatt-scale supercluster and is due online in 2026, supported by nuclear supply agreements with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra. Hyperion in Richland Parish, Louisiana was expanded on 13 July 2026 to 5GW at more than $50bn, from roughly $27bn, across over 4 million square feet. A third site in El Paso, Texas — announced 26 March 2026 as a joint venture with BlackRock — carries over $10bn of Meta investment for approximately 1GW from 2028. The financing template comes from the October 2025 Hyperion joint venture with Blue Owl Capital, in which Blue Owl holds 80% and Meta 20% of a vehicle funded by roughly $27bn of A+ rated senior secured notes due 2049 plus about $2.5bn of equity — the largest private-credit transaction executed to date. El Paso reuses the structure.

Wearables as the next platform. Meta Ray-Ban Display launched at $799 including the Meta Neural Band on 30 September 2025, though international rollout was delayed when US demand outran supply. On 23 June 2026 Meta launched its first in-house-designed eyewear line with EssilorLuxottica — Fury and Adventurer from $299, and a Kylie Jenner co-designed Starfire at $399 — the first glasses to ship with Muse Spark out of the box. EssilorLuxottica said on 11 February 2026 that it more than tripled Meta AI glasses sales in 2025, to over 7 million units against roughly 2 million across 2023 and 2024 combined. Meta Connect on 23 September 2026 is the next disclosure point.

Monetising the messaging estate. WhatsApp paid messaging and subscriptions are the stated driver of Family of Apps "Other revenue", which reached $1,007m in Q2 2026, up 73%. Status ads are rolling out globally in the Updates tab while personal chats remain ad-free and end-to-end encrypted. More than one million businesses now use Meta business agents weekly across WhatsApp and Messenger. Kunal Shah, founder of CRED, was named Head of WhatsApp on 29 July 2026. Threads passed 500 million monthly active users in Q2 2026 and completed its global advertising rollout in the same quarter; Meta does not break out Threads revenue.

Selling compute and agents to businesses. Zuckerberg framed the July 2026 call around "entirely new enterprise opportunities" — the Meta Model API, the Meta Business Agent Platform, and Meta One, a subscription bundling AI features across Meta's apps. He noted Meta has received offers at a meaningful premium over what it paid for compute but is prioritising internal use. Compute partnerships underpin all of this: a reported multibillion-dollar Google Cloud TPU arrangement signed around March 2026 under which Meta rents TPUs through 2026 and purchases in 2027, and an expanded CoreWeave agreement on 9 April 2026 adding roughly $21bn for 2027–2032 on top of a prior $14.2bn deal.

8. Competitive Landscape

Peer	Market cap (September 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Alphabet (GOOGL)	Approximately $4,123bn	FY2025 revenue $402.84bn and net income $132.17bn; Google Cloud revenue grew 82% to $24.8bn in Q2 2026 with a $514bn backlog
Amazon (AMZN)	Approximately $2,750bn	FY2025 revenue $716.92bn and net income $77.67bn; AWS grew 37% in Q2 2026 to a $169bn annualised run rate, its fastest in 18 quarters
Microsoft (MSFT)	Approximately $3,689bn	FY2026, year ended 30 June 2026, revenue $331.84bn and net income $133.75bn; commercial remaining performance obligation $678bn, up 84%
Pinterest (PINS)	Approximately $12.0bn	FY2025 revenue $4.22bn and net income $0.42bn — roughly 2% of Meta's revenue on a comparable advertising model
Snap (SNAP)	Approximately $9.45bn	FY2025 revenue $5.93bn and a net loss of $0.46bn; short interest sits at 8.8% of float against Meta's 1.3%
ByteDance / TikTok (private)	No listed market cap; marketed at approximately $550bn in February 2026	Revenue of $186bn in FY2024, reported to be approaching $200bn in 2026. Overtook Meta as the largest social media company by quarterly revenue in Q2 2025, at $48bn against Meta's $46bn

The comparison that matters most is not a listed one. ByteDance passing Meta on quarterly revenue in 2025, and its re-rating to roughly $550bn after US approval in January 2026 of TikTok's restructuring into a majority US-owned joint venture, is the clearest evidence that Meta's share of global attention is contested. Against the listed megacaps, Meta carries the lowest forward multiple of the four despite the fastest recent revenue growth. Track the sector on the ChartsView Economic Calendar.

9. Insider Activity

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, filed only two Form 4s in the whole of 2026 and neither reports an open-market sale. The 31 July 2026 filing records a conversion of 591,690 Class B shares into Class A and matched gift transactions of the same number of shares among Chan Zuckerberg Initiative entities — philanthropic transfers, not disposals. Every other executive and director transaction below is an open-market sale, and all of the sales identified were made under Rule 10b5-1 trading plans adopted well in advance. There were no open-market insider purchases in 2026.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Susan Li, Chief Financial Officer	18 Aug 2026	Sale	9,196 Class A	$547.51–$560.63	Approximately $5.07m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 25 Nov 2025
Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer	18 Aug 2026	Sale	7,848 Class A	$558.00	Approximately $4.38m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 31 Jan 2025
Curtis J. Mahoney, Chief Legal Officer	18 Aug 2026	Sale	1,559 Class A	$558.00	Approximately $0.87m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 25 Feb 2026
Dina H. Powell McCormick, President and Vice Chairman	15 Aug 2026	RSU vesting and tax withholding, not a sale	7,732 acquired; 3,518 withheld	$589.85 (withholding)	Not an open-market disposal	Quarterly RSU vesting from 15 Feb 2026
Javier Olivan, Chief Operating Officer	10 Aug 2026	Sale	1,692 Class A	$600.00–$607.14	Approximately $1.02m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 17 Nov 2025
Marc L. Andreessen, Director	4 Aug 2026	Sale	426 Class A	$588.16–$591.69	Approximately $0.25m	Held of record by a16z Capital Management following distributions in kind
Robert M. Kimmitt, Director	3 Aug 2026	Sale	500 Class A	$561.56	Approximately $0.28m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 25 Feb 2026
Peggy Alford, Director	31 Jul 2026	Sale	464 Class A	$543.56	Approximately $0.25m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 25 Nov 2025

The pattern is pre-scheduled diversification running straight through a falling share price, from roughly $661 in mid-July to $548 in mid-August, with no discretionary selling and no buying. Javier Olivan sells on a weekly cadence — 1,466 shares at $607.85 on 27 July, 1,466 at $645.85 on 20 July and 2,163 at around $661 on 13 July. Susan Li sold 55,571 shares for approximately $36.4m on 27 February 2026 under the same November 2025 plan.

10. Key Risks

• Material litigation, now a realised cash cost: Meta booked $2.40bn of legal charges in Q2 2026, agreed on 26 August 2026 to pay up to $18bn over ten years to settle multistate teen-safety claims, and expects to accrue approximately $10bn in Q3 2026 — a charge explicitly outside guidance given six weeks earlier. The New Mexico Attorney General trial beginning 8 September 2026, where penalties of up to $62.85bn have been signalled, is not covered by that settlement, and 3,137 suits remain in the multidistrict litigation. Meta's own CFO commentary warns that youth-related trials "may ultimately result in a material loss".
• Capital expenditure with no disclosed return test: FY2026 capital expenditure guidance of $130–145bn is roughly double FY2025's $72.22bn and more than five times FY2023's $28.1bn. Q2 2026 free cash flow fell 91% to $784m, buybacks stopped entirely, and management declined to guide 2027 while stating it is maximising 2026 and 2027 capacity — implying a further step up. Non-cancellable contractual commitments were $349.31bn at 30 June 2026.
• The debt build is repricing against Meta: long-term debt rose from $18,385m at FY2023 to $83,664m at 30 June 2026, a 4.5-fold increase in 30 months. The April and May 2026 $25bn issue drew $96bn of orders against $125bn six months earlier and priced wider on nearly every tranche; carrying value of $83.66bn compares with an estimated fair value of $79.75bn, meaning the bonds trade below par. Interest expense net of capitalised interest tripled year on year to $754m in the quarter.
• Reality Labs has no disclosed path to breakeven: the division lost $19,193m in FY2025 and $8,647m in H1 2026 on FY2025 revenue of $2,207m. Cumulative losses exceed $40bn since 2020. Meta guided in January 2026 that operating losses would remain similar to 2025 levels, and Quest shipments fell 16% year on year over the first three quarters of 2025.
• Revenue concentration in a single advertising line: advertising was 97.6% of FY2025 revenue and 97.6% of Q2 2026 revenue. Reality Labs contributes 0.7% of quarterly revenue and non-advertising app revenue 1.7%. There is no diversified base to absorb an advertising downturn, and Meta's own forward-looking statements name reliance on advertising revenue as a risk factor.
• European regulatory exposure running on three tracks: two open Digital Services Act proceedings — on under-13 access opened 29 April 2026, and on addictive design opened 10 July 2026 — each carry a maximum penalty of 6% of global annual turnover, over $12bn on FY2025 revenue. The addictive-design remedies proposed by the Commission include disabling autoplay and infinite scroll by default and a less engagement-oriented recommender, which would directly reduce the impressions that drive advertising revenue. A €200m Digital Markets Act fine was already levied in April 2025, and a Statement of Objections was issued on 9 February 2026 over WhatsApp's exclusion of rival AI chatbots.
• Attention competition and decelerating audience growth: daily active people growth has slowed from 7% in December 2025 to 4% in March 2026 to 3% in June 2026, so revenue growth now comes almost entirely from monetisation. ByteDance overtook Meta on quarterly revenue in Q2 2025 and was marketed at roughly $550bn in February 2026 following US approval of TikTok's restructuring.
• Key-person concentration and organisational churn: Zuckerberg holds voting control and is the sole architect of the superintelligence strategy. Beneath him, Yann LeCun left the Chief AI Scientist role on 20 November 2025 and the title appears unfilled, approximately 600 Superintelligence Labs roles were cut in October 2025, roughly 8,000 employees were cut in May 2026, and the Chief Information Security Officer announced his departure on 2 June 2026.
• Tax volatility large enough to swamp operating results: a $15.93bn non-cash charge cut Q3 2025 EPS to $1.05, an $8.03bn benefit lifted Q1 2026 EPS to $10.44 at a negative 23% effective rate, and the 2026 outlook has already been revised from 13–16% to 15–17%. Reported GAAP EPS is currently a poor read on underlying earnings in either direction.

11. Recent Developments

• 25 Mar 2026 — First personal-injury bellwether verdict against Meta. A Los Angeles Superior Court jury found Meta and Google negligent over design choices contributing to a minor plaintiff's depression and suicidal ideation, awarding $6m in damages. Internal documents shown at trial included a memo about winning "big with teens" by bringing them in as tweens.
• 26 Mar 2026 — El Paso data centre joint venture announced with BlackRock. Approximately 1GW of capacity with over $10bn of Meta investment, online from 2028, structured as an 80/20 special purpose vehicle mirroring the Blue Owl template.
• 08 Apr 2026 — Muse Spark launched, ending the open Llama line. The first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs and the first major new Meta model in a year, released closed-weight in private preview.
• 29 Apr 2026 — Q1 2026 results, and the market punished the spending. Revenue $56.31bn up 33%, net income $26.77bn, diluted EPS $10.44 including an $8.03bn tax benefit. Capital expenditure guidance was raised to $125–145bn and the shares fell roughly 7% after hours despite the beat. The European Commission issued its first Digital Services Act preliminary finding the same day, over failure to prevent under-13s accessing the services.
• 30 Apr 2026 — Approximately $25bn bond offering launched one day after results. Six series, coupons of 4.55% to 6.45%, longest tranche maturing 2066. Peak orders were $96bn against roughly $125bn for the October 2025 deal, and nearly all tranches priced wider.
• 20 May 2026 — Approximately 8,000 employees laid off, around 10% of the workforce. Roughly 6,000 open roles were also cancelled and upwards of 7,000 workers were redirected into AI teams. Zuckerberg's memo said "Success isn't a given." Severance of $1.18bn was booked in Q2.
• 23 Jun 2026 — Meta Glasses own-brand line launched with EssilorLuxottica. Meta's first in-house-designed eyewear, from $299, and the first glasses to ship with Muse Spark.
• 10 Jul 2026 — Second Digital Services Act preliminary finding, on addictive design. The Commission preliminarily found Instagram and Facebook in breach over infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and personalised recommenders. Proposed remedies include disabling autoplay and infinite scroll by default and a less engagement-oriented recommender.
• 13 Jul 2026 — Hyperion investment raised to more than $50bn. The Louisiana campus was expanded to 5GW from roughly $27bn previously. A further approximately $68bn of data centre leases were entered during July, commencing 2027 and 2028 on 18 to 20 year terms.
• 29 Jul 2026 — Q2 2026 results missed on earnings. Revenue $60.80bn up 28%, but EPS of $6.18 fell 13% against consensus of roughly $7.20, operating income fell 8%, and costs rose 55% including $2.40bn of legal charges and $1.18bn of severance. Free cash flow collapsed to $784m from $8.55bn. Capital expenditure guidance was narrowed to $130–145bn and the expense floor raised. Shares fell 4.2% after hours, deepening to 7–9% over the following session.
• 18 Aug 2026 — First state attorney-general trial opened in Oakland, California. California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey argued Meta engineered Instagram and Facebook to capture minors' attention and deceived the public about safety. Trial proceedings had begun on 12 August.
• 26 Aug 2026 — Mid-trial settlement of up to $18bn agreed with 52 state attorneys general. Just over $17bn resolves the suit brought jointly by 29 states in 2023, payable over ten years, of which approximately $12.7bn is guaranteed and $5.3bn is contingent on YouTube and TikTok adopting comparable protections and matching payments. Mandated teen changes include a two-hour daily time limit, muted notifications during school hours, a non-algorithmic feed option, and a bar on switching off certain safety settings without parental consent. Meta expects to accrue approximately $10bn in Q3 2026.
• 02 Sep 2026 — Shares closed at $592.85, up 2.47% on the day. Meta also permanently disabled cameras on roughly 7,000 pairs of smart glasses whose owners had defeated the LED recording-indicator light, and announced Muse Spark 1.3 and Muse Voice Transcribe.

On the antitrust track, Meta won at first instance. On 18 November 2025 US District Judge James E. Boasberg held that the Federal Trade Commission had failed to prove Meta currently holds monopoly power in personal social networking, finding that Meta competes with TikTok and YouTube and that the proposed market was unduly narrow. No divestiture was ordered. The FTC filed a notice of appeal on 20 January 2026 to the D.C. Circuit and 28 states plus the District of Columbia filed a supporting amicus brief on 29 May 2026. Separately, buybacks were nil throughout the first half of 2026 while dividends continued at $1,353m per quarter. Discussion of these filings continues on the ChartsView Forum.

12. Key Dates

• 08 Sep 2026 — New Mexico Attorney General trial scheduled to begin. The state has indicated an intent to seek penalties of up to $62.85bn; these claims are not covered by the 26 August multistate settlement.
• 08 Sep 2026 — FTC consent-order litigation status update due in the District Court for the District of Columbia, following the stay continued on 9 June 2026.
• 23 Sep 2026 — Meta Connect 2026 opens at the Menlo Park campus, keynote at 4pm Pacific, running to 24 September. Zuckerberg has said there will be more to share on the glasses lineup.
• 29 Sep 2026 — FTC reply brief due in the D.C. Circuit appeal, No. 26-5028. No oral argument date has been set.
• Expected September 2026 — Declaration of the Q3 2026 dividend. The rate has been held at $0.525 per quarter throughout 2025 and 2026; the most recent payment was made on 25 June 2026 to holders of record on 15 June 2026. No Q3 declaration had been made as at 3 September 2026.
• 06 Oct 2026 — Deferred appendix due in the D.C. Circuit appeal, with final briefs due 20 October 2026.
• Expected October 2026 — Q3 2026 results. Calendar providers most commonly cite 28 October 2026 after market close, with an estimated window running to 2 November 2026. Meta had issued no confirming press release as at 3 September 2026.
• Expected February 2027 — Next school-district bellwether trial in multidistrict litigation 3047 before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. Exact date not confirmed.
• TBC — European Commission decisions on the two open Digital Services Act proceedings, and on the WhatsApp AI-chatbot Statement of Objections issued 9 February 2026. Meta may inspect the file and respond in writing; no deadline for a final decision has been published.

Article 50 transparency obligations under the EU AI Act became enforceable on 2 August 2026, and Meta signed the associated Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content during July 2026. Italy's competition authority ordered Meta to halt the WhatsApp AI-chatbot restriction in Italy on 24 December 2025, and that probe runs in parallel with the Commission's.

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