Trump administration’s One Massive Stunning Invoice Act guarantees to fill Meta’s coffers
US president Donald Trump’s One Massive Stunning Invoice Act may see Meta, one of many world’s Most worthy corporations, have an efficient tax charge of 14%, in contrast with its reported efficient tax charge of 87%. It would imply its reported web revenue of $2.7bn would successfully be $19bn.
The corporate, which posted third-quarter income of $51bn, grew its enterprise by 26%. Complete bills elevated to $31bn, up 32% in contrast with final yr.
Capital expenditure, together with principal funds on finance leases, had been $19.4bn, pushed by investments in servers, datacentres and community infrastructure.
Discussing the expenditure, chief monetary officer Susan Li stated: “Our major focus is deploying capital to help the corporate’s highest order priorities, together with creating main AI merchandise, fashions and enterprise options.
“As we make vital investments in infrastructure to help this work, we’re centered on preserving most long-term flexibility to make sure we are able to meet our future capability wants whereas additionally with the ability to reply to how the market develops within the years forward. We’re doing so in a number of methods, together with staging datacentre websites so we are able to spring up capability shortly in future years as we’d like it, in addition to establishing strategic partnerships that give us possibility worth for future compute wants.”
Li stated she anticipates complete bills will develop at a considerably quicker share charge in 2026 than 2025, with progress pushed primarily by infrastructure prices, together with incremental cloud bills and depreciation.
“Worker compensation prices would be the second largest contributor to progress, as we recognise a full yr of compensation for workers employed all through 2025, significantly AI expertise, and add technical expertise in precedence areas,” she added.
Past the expansion in synthetic intelligence (AI) and datacentre capital expenditure, Li reported decrease income in Meta’s Actuality Labs enterprise. She put the discount right down to demand for the corporate’s new headsets.
“The anticipated discount in Actuality Labs income is because of us lapping the introduction of Quest 3S within the fourth quarter of final yr in addition to retail companions procuring Quest headsets through the third quarter of this yr to organize for the vacation season, which had been recorded as income within the third quarter.”
Discussing the recognition of Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakley AI glasses, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO, stated: “We proceed to guide the business in AI glasses. we’re going to need to spend money on growing manufacturing and promoting extra of these. That is an space the place we’re clearly main and have an enormous alternative forward. Taking a step again, if we ship even a fraction of the chance forward for our current apps and the brand new experiences which might be attainable, then I feel that the following few years would be the most enjoyable interval in our historical past.”
Commenting on Meta’s outcomes, Forrester’s vice-president analysis director Mike Proulx stated: “Sadly, Meta’s robust income and consumer progress in Q3 is tainted by considerably elevated prices throughout the board. True to type, Meta’s Actuality Labs continued its streak of losses with no indicators of slowing down.
“It’s no shock that Meta’s Ray-Ban Show glasses are producing buzz,” he continued. “This new computing platform piques the curiosity of early adopters. In the case of {hardware} gadgets, Meta has discovered its area of interest with AI-powered glasses, whereas different corporations stay quick followers unlikely to catch up within the close to time period.”
