Executive Summary

Q4 revenue grew 21% year over year to $48.39B, up from $40.59B in Q3, with operating margin expanding to 48% (from 43% in Q3) and diluted EPS of $8.02; results benefited from ad pricing strength and a $1.55B reduction in legal accruals that lowered G&A expense .
CFO guided Q1 2025 revenue to $39.5–$41.8B (8–15% y/y; ~3% FX headwind) and initiated FY 2025 expense guidance of $114–$119B and CapEx of $60–$65B, including a server useful life extension to 5.5 years that lowers 2025 depreciation by ~$2.9B .
Ads engine momentum continued: ad impressions +6% y/y and average price per ad +14% y/y; management cited new ML system “Andromeda” (10,000x model complexity for retrieval) driving an 8% improvement in ad quality on tested objectives and Advantage+ Shopping surpassing a $20B annual run-rate (+70% y/y) .
Reality Labs delivered $1.08B in Q4 revenue (holiday hardware) but posted a $5.0B operating loss; management reiterated long-term AR/VR and AI glasses priorities even as 2025 CapEx accelerates materially .
Estimate comparison: S&P Global consensus was temporarily unavailable at time of analysis; as a result, we cannot quantify beats/misses versus Street for Q4. We attempted to retrieve estimates from S&P Global but access was unavailable at the time. Values would be retrieved from S&P Global when available.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

Operating leverage and EPS strength: Operating margin expanded to 48% and net income rose 49% y/y to $20.84B; diluted EPS increased 50% to $8.02, supported by strong ad pricing and a $1.55B reduction in legal accruals that lowered G&A .
Ads performance and tooling: Average price per ad rose 14% y/y and Andromeda unlocked a 10,000x increase in retrieval model complexity, driving an 8% improvement in ad quality on tested objectives; Advantage+ Shopping exceeded a $20B run-rate (+70% y/y) .
Strategic AI and product scale: CEO sees 2025 as the year a highly personalized AI assistant reaches >1B people; Threads surpassed 320M MAUs with ads testing underway; Meta AI monthly actives >700M (usage scaling) .

What Went Wrong

Reality Labs losses persist: RL posted a $4.97B operating loss in Q4 despite $1.08B revenue, underscoring heavy investment needs in hardware and ecosystem .
Higher 2025 spend/CapEx: FY 2025 expense guidance ($114–$119B) and CapEx ($60–$65B) imply materially higher investment intensity; management flagged infra (servers, data centers, networking) as the largest growth driver .
Regulatory/legal overhang: Company continues to “monitor an active regulatory landscape” in the EU and U.S. that could significantly impact results; 2024 included large legal items (e.g., accrual decreases in Q4) that add noise to expense trendlines .

Financial Results

Meta consolidated results by quarter

Metric	Q2 2024	Q3 2024	Q4 2024
Revenue ($B)	$39.07	$40.59	$48.39
Operating Income ($B)	$14.85	$17.35	$23.37
Operating Margin (%)	38%	43%	48%
Net Income ($B)	$13.47	$15.69	$20.84
Diluted EPS ($)	$5.16	$6.03	$8.02

Segment breakdown

Segment Metric	Q2 2024	Q3 2024	Q4 2024
Family of Apps (FoA) Revenue ($B)	$38.72	$40.32	$47.30
Reality Labs (RL) Revenue ($B)	$0.35	$0.27	$1.08
FoA Operating Income ($B)	$19.34	$21.78	$28.33
RL Operating Loss ($B)	$(4.49)	$(4.43)	$(4.97)

KPIs and cash/CapEx

KPI / Cash Metric	Q2 2024	Q3 2024	Q4 2024
Family Daily Active People (B)	3.27	3.29	3.35
Ad Impressions YoY Growth (%)	10%	7%	6%
Avg. Price per Ad YoY Growth (%)	10%	11%	14%
Free Cash Flow ($B)	$10.90	$15.52	$13.15
CapEx incl. finance leases ($B)	$8.47	$9.20	$14.84
Cash & Marketable Securities ($B)	$58.08	$70.90	$77.81
Long-term Debt ($B)	$18.39	$28.82	$28.83
Headcount	70,799	72,404	74,067

Estimate comparison (S&P Global consensus unavailable at time of analysis)

Q4 2024 vs Estimates	Actual	Consensus	Surprise
Revenue ($B)	$48.39	N/A	N/A
Diluted EPS ($)	$8.02	N/A	N/A

Note: S&P Global consensus data was temporarily inaccessible during analysis; we attempted retrieval but access was unavailable at the time. Consensus figures will be sourced from S&P Global when available.

Guidance Changes

Metric	Period	Previous Guidance	Current Guidance	Change
Total Revenue	Q4 2024	$45–$48B (Q3 guide)	Actual: $48.39B	Delivered near high end
Total Revenue	Q1 2025	N/A	$39.5–$41.8B; 8–15% y/y; ~3% FX headwind	Initiated
Total Expenses	FY 2025	N/A	$114–$119B	Initiated
Capital Expenditures	FY 2025	“Significant growth expected” (qualitative)	$60–$65B	Quantified range; higher intensity
Tax Rate	FY 2025	N/A	12–15%	Initiated
Server/Network Useful Life	From FY 2025	N/A	Increase to 5.5 years; lowers 2025 depreciation by ~$2.9B	Accounting estimate updated
Quarterly Dividend	Q4 2024	$0.50/sh declared Dec-2024	—	Baseline
Quarterly Dividend	Q1 2025	—	Raised 5% to $0.525/sh (payable Mar 26, 2025)	Raised

Earnings Call Themes & Trends

Topic	Previous Mentions (Q2 & Q3)	Current Period (Q4)	Trend
AI assistant & Llama models	Q2: Meta AI on track to be most used; open source advances . Q3: Training Llama 4 on >100k H100s; Meta AI >500M MAUs .	CEO expects a highly personalized assistant to reach >1B people in 2025; Llama 4 natively multimodal with agentic capabilities .	Accelerating scale and ambition
Ads performance & tools	Q2: Price/ad +10% y/y . Q3: Price/ad +11% y/y; improved recommendations and new models .	Price/ad +14% y/y; Andromeda boosts ad retrieval complexity 10,000x and ads quality +8%; Advantage+ Shopping >$20B run-rate, +70% y/y .	Pricing strength; ML-driven lift
Video/Reels/Threads	Q3: Unified video player; Threads ~275M MAUs .	Threads >320M MAUs; ads tests begun (not meaningful in 2025); video time up double-digit in Instagram and in U.S. Facebook .	Growing engagement; early monetization
Infra/CapEx	Q2/Q3: Significant 2025 CapEx expected .	FY25 CapEx $60–$65B; increase server/network useful life to 5.5 years .	Large multi-year build-out
Custom silicon	Q3: Scaling infra; flexibility .	MTIA deployed to ranking/reco inference in 2024; broader ramp in 2025 and extend to training next year .	Deeper vertical integration
Regional ads growth	Q3: ROW and Europe strongest .	Q4: ROW +27% y/y; APAC +23%; Europe +22%; NA +18% .	Broad-based, ex-NA strongest
Regulatory/macro	Q3: EU/U.S. headwinds .	Continues to monitor active regulatory landscape in EU/U.S. .	Persistent overhang

Management Commentary

“This is going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant.” – Mark Zuckerberg .
“These are all big investments, especially the hundreds of billions of dollars that we will invest in AI infrastructure over the long term... almost a gigawatt of capacity this year... building a 2-gigawatt... AI data center.” – Mark Zuckerberg .
“Andromeda... enabled a 10,000x increase in the complexity of models we use for ads retrieval... driven an 8% increase in the quality of ads that people see on objectives we’ve tested.” – Susan Li .
“We expect our full year 2025 capital expenses will be in the range of $60 billion to $65 billion... The majority of our CapEx in 2025 will continue to be directed towards our core business.” – Susan Li .
“We expect... to increase [useful life] to approximately 5.5 years... delivering savings in annual CapEx and resulting depreciation expense, which is already included in our guidance.” – Susan Li .

Q&A Highlights

Open source strategy and competition: Management believes broader adoption of Llama will standardize ecosystems, drive hardware/software optimization, and reduce costs; recent competitors’ advances will be studied and incorporated where appropriate .
Meta AI monetization timing: Focus in 2025 is on scaling usage; meaningful monetization expected beyond 2025 (paid recommendations/premium potential over time) .
Custom silicon trajectory: MTIA focused on ranking/recommendation inference in 2024, ramping in 2025; expansion to training workloads next year while maintaining third-party silicon partnerships .
Ad pricing drivers: Pricing uplift reflects stronger advertiser demand and improved performance; ongoing optimization of ad load across surfaces; Threads ads testing to be gradual and not material in 2025 .
CapEx supply/constraints: 2025 GPU deployments to ramp significantly; long-run capital intensity remains uncertain given evolving model architectures, inference vs. training mix, and monetization pathways .

Estimates Context

We attempted to retrieve S&P Global consensus for revenue and EPS to quantify beats/misses, but access was unavailable at the time of analysis. Once accessible, we will anchor all estimate comparisons on S&P Global and update the “vs estimates” table accordingly.
Directionally, Q4 revenue of $48.39B exceeded the top end of Q3’s $45–$48B guide and EPS was $8.02, but without S&P Global consensus we cannot state beat/miss versus Street at this time . Values will be retrieved from S&P Global when available.

Key Takeaways for Investors

Strong finish to 2024: Revenue accelerated to $48.39B and operating margin to 48%, aided by ad pricing and lower legal accruals; FoA operating income reached $28.33B in Q4 .
2025 investment surge: FY25 expenses ($114–$119B) and CapEx ($60–$65B) underscore a multi-year AI infrastructure build-out; useful life extension to 5.5 years lowers 2025 depreciation by ~$2.9B, partially offsetting opex/depr. headwinds .
Ads engine still compounding: Andromeda and Advantage+ gains suggest further ROAS improvements and CPM support, while Threads ads tests offer optionality beyond 2025 .
RL remains a drag near term: Q4 RL loss of ~$5B highlights the cost of category creation; holiday revenue seasonality helps but profitability remains distant .
Q1 2025 guide: $39.5–$41.8B implies healthy y/y growth despite ~3% FX headwind and lapping leap day; sets baseline for 2025 trajectory .
Dividend signaling: Initiated $0.50 quarterly dividend in Dec-2024 and raised 5% to $0.525 for Q1 2025, reflecting confidence amid heavy AI spend .
Watch catalysts: Updates on Llama 4, Meta AI scale/engagement, Threads monetization ramp, and infra milestones (GPU deployments, MTIA rollout) could drive sentiment; regulatory headlines remain a swing factor .

All citations: Q4 2024 8-K earnings press release and exhibits , Q4 2024 earnings call transcript , Q3 2024 press release , Q2 2024 press release , dividend announcements .

Meta Platforms, Inc. (META)·Q4 2024 Earnings Summary