Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) set out capital spending plans for full-year 2026 that exceeded market expectations, but a solid fourth-quarter revenue and profit beat — alongside strong near-term guidance — helped ease investor concerns over the returns from the Facebook owner’s aggressive push into artificial intelligence.
Shares in the Magnificent Seven group surged more than 8% in premarket trading on Thursday.
For the first quarter, Meta forecast revenue of between $53.5 billion and $56.5 billion, well ahead of the consensus estimate of $51.27 billion.
“Earnings beat and so did Q1 revenue guidance. Those are the positives that are now pushing the stock higher,” Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told Investing.com.
Looking further ahead, Meta guided to full-year 2026 capital expenditure of $115 billion to $135 billion, alongside total expenses of $162 billion to $169 billion. Both figures came in above Wall Street expectations of roughly $110 billion for capex and $150 billion for expenses, according to estimates compiled by Jefferies.
Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said last week that higher guidance on spending would not come as a shock. “(Management) has telegraphed elevated spend needs & typically issues initial guidance that lands above actual results,” Thill noted.
The owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has been ramping up investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure, committing billions of dollars to data centres and related hardware to support its expanding AI capabilities. Earlier this week, the company announced a $6 billion deal with Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) to supply fibre-optic cable for its data centre buildout.
Meta said its 2026 capex outlook reflects increased investment to support its Superintelligence Labs initiative as well as ongoing needs across its core businesses. The group added that most of the expected rise in expenses next year will be driven by infrastructure-related costs, including third-party cloud services and higher operating expenses tied to its expanding data centre footprint.
“There are some investors who are concerned that META is changing from an asset-light company to one that will require significant borrowing to meet those spending requirements, but the early response shows that those are taking a back seat to the positives on revenue, especially when the company was able to charge more for ads,” Sosnick said.
The results come after a relatively muted period for the stock. Meta shares are up around 2% year to date, broadly in line with the S&P 500. In 2025, the stock gained 12.7%, lagging the index’s 16.4% rise and ranking fourth among the Magnificent Seven in terms of annual performance.
For the fourth quarter, Meta reported earnings of $8.88 per share on revenue of $59.89 billion, comfortably ahead of analyst forecasts for $8.19 per share on revenue of $58.35 billion.
“We had strong business performance in 2025. I’m looking forward to advancing personal superintelligence for people around the world in 2026,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.