Meta Q4 Beats On Top & Bottom Lines Amid AI Jitters, Reported Legal Settlement With President Trump​on January 29, 2025 at 10:00 pm

consistently beat Wall Street estimates on key fourth quarter numbers but forecasts for the current first quarter disappointed a bit as investors wait to grill CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a range of topics from AI rivals and investments, and new social media moderation policies. Here’s to hoping Wall Streeters on a call shortly will ask about Zuckerberg’s shift towards President Donald Trump, including a reported legal settlement.

Meta posted quarterly revenue of $48.39 million, up 21% and beating estimates. Net income of $20.8 million was up 49% and earnings per share of $8.02 up 50%, higher than expected. and

Daily active users across all its family of apps rose 5% to 3.35 billion.

The results arrived later than usual after market close. During the wait, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump signed settlement papers to resolve a years-old lawsuit with Meta that would require the company to pay $25 million. The suit centered on Meta kicking Trump off Facebook, along with other social media platforms, after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

In AI, Chinese AI model, DeepSeek upended tech stocks Monday. Does that mean his aggressive 2025 capital program remains warranted. The Facebook founder said Meta could invest $60 million to $65 million in AI this year.

DeepSeek claimed to have made a good large language model and chatbot rivaling leader ChatGPT at a much lower cost than U.S. rivals. That’s not all bad if others can find a way to do AI cheaper as well.

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