Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and more, saw its top-line revenue jump 26% to a whopping $51.2 billion in the third quarter — a new quarterly record. But a provision of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act led to a huge tax charge, causing the internet giant to fall well short of Wall Street expectations.
The implementation of the U.S.’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act led to “the recognition of a valuation allowance against our U.S. federal deferred tax assets, reflecting the impact of the U.S. Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax,” Meta said in announcing Q3 results. As a result, its earnings for the quarter included a one-time, non-cash income tax charge of $15.93 billion.
Meta also said, “We expect a significant reduction in our U.S. federal cash tax payments for the remainder of 2025 and future years due to the implementation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
The company’s net income for Q3 was $2.71 billion — down 83% on the tax charge — translating to earnings of $1.05 per share. (Analysts consensus estimates had pegged EPS of $6.69.) Excluding the one-time tax charge, Meta’s diluted EPS would have been $7.25, according to the company.
For the month of September, the average daily active users across Meta’s family of apps (including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads) was 3.54 billion, up 8% year-over-year.
“We had a strong quarter for our business and our community,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO, said in announcing the results. “Meta Superintelligence Labs is off to a great start and we continue to lead the industry in AI glasses. If we deliver even a fraction of the opportunity ahead, then the next few years will be the most exciting period in our history.”
Meta’s Reality Labs segment, which includes the Quest headset and its other VR and augmented-reality businesses, continued to lose billions. Q3 revenue for Reality Labs was $470 million (vs. $270 million in the year-prior period), while operating loss was $4.43 billion (roughly flat).
The company ended the quarter with $44.45 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. Meta’s headcount was 78,450 employees as of Sept. 30, up 8% year-over-year.
Meta said it anticipates Q4 total revenue to be $56 billion-$59 billion and full-year 2025 capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, to be $70 billion-$72 billion (up from the prior outlook of $66 billion-$72 billion). The company said it expects capital spending “will be notably larger” in 2026 than 2025, as it looks to add more computing infrastructure for AI than it previously anticipated.
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