Meta Platforms Inc. (META) reported first-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $7.40 on Wednesday after the close, blowing past the $6.80 Wall Street consensus, as the AI-driven ad-targeting flywheel continued to deliver outsized monetization gains. Total revenue of $46.2 billion easily topped the $44.0 billion estimate; ad impressions grew 9% year-on-year while average price per ad rose 12%.
Family of Apps daily active people (DAP) reached 3.45 billion at the end of March, up from 3.39 billion in the December quarter and ahead of the 3.42 billion consensus. Family of Apps revenue grew 21% to $45.2 billion, while operating income jumped 35% to $20.8 billion as operating margin expanded 470 basis points to 46%. CFO Susan Li said WhatsApp Business platform monetization grew "well over 100% year-on-year" off a meaningful base.
Reality Labs and Quest 4 Inflection
Reality Labs delivered $1.34 billion of revenue versus the $1.05 billion consensus, with the operating loss narrowing 24% year-on-year to $3.4 billion. Quest 4 — launched February 14 — is now the fastest-selling Meta hardware in company history, with management citing 4.6 million units sold through to date and pre-orders for the Quest 4 Pro (May 22 launch) "tracking ahead of the Quest 3 Pro at the comparable point."
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the call that Llama 4.1, released in March, is now the "most-downloaded open-source model series in history" with more than 4.0 billion cumulative downloads of all Llama variants. Meta AI assistant — embedded across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the standalone app — surpassed 1.6 billion monthly active users in March, up from 1.0 billion in December. The Ray-Ban Meta v3 smart glasses crossed 8 million units sold lifetime.