Meta Trades at 21.5 Times Earnings as $145 Billion AI Spend Clouds 26.2% Growth
Updated
Updated · Trefis · Jul 7
Meta Trades at 21.5 Times Earnings as $145 Billion AI Spend Clouds 26.2% Growth
2 articles · Updated · Trefis · Jul 7
Summary
Meta trades around $600 a share and at 21.5 times earnings even after posting 26.2% revenue growth and a 41.2% operating margin, leaving it cheaper than Alphabet and Amazon on stronger core metrics.
That discount reflects Meta’s expanding AI investment cycle: management lifted 2026 capital-expenditure guidance to $125 billion-$145 billion, while infrastructure and cloud commitments added $107 billion in a single quarter.
Management has also said it still underestimates compute needs and lacks a precise scaling plan for some AI products, with monetization ideas such as commissions or premium offerings still largely conceptual.
The near-term test is whether AI spending is already lifting the ad business, where Meta said model upgrades drove more than a 6% conversion-rate gain for landing-page-view ads.
Second-quarter revenue guidance of $58 billion-$61 billion is now the clearest checkpoint for whether those AI bets are paying off in the core business rather than just funding longer-term projects.