Meta’s earnings beat revives debate over whether AI spending can lift its valuation to $2 trillion

Meta Platforms’ latest quarterly results drew a strong reaction from the company’s financials, not from its stock price. In a prediction published Monday, 24/7 Wall St. argued that Meta could be worth $2 trillion “on this date,” framing the scenario around the idea that the market is still discounting how Meta’s earnings power will develop after a quarter it described as a clean mega-cap beat. The prediction comes after Meta reported first-quarter 2026 diluted earnings per share of $10.44, up sharply from $6.43 a year earlier, alongside revenue growth to $56.31 billion. (EPS is earnings per share, a per-share profit measure.)

Meta’s results, filed with regulators and posted on its investor website, showed broad strength in its ad-driven core business. Advertising remained the dominant revenue stream, and Meta reported that Family of Apps (its portfolio including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp) delivered $55.909 billion in revenue with $26.900 billion in operating income during the quarter. Meta also reported Reality Labs (its virtual and augmented reality hardware and software segment) generated $402 million in revenue but an operating loss of $4.028 billion, underscoring that AI and metaverse bets are still consuming cash.

The quarter also featured a regulatory and accounting caveat that matters for interpreting the headline EPS beat. Meta said first-quarter 2026 EPS included an $8.03 billion income tax benefit that partially offset a prior non-cash tax charge, and it disclosed that without that benefit, its diluted EPS would have been $3.13 lower. Meta also gave forward guidance for the next quarter, expecting total second-quarter 2026 revenue of $58 to $61 billion. For full-year 2026, the company maintained expectations for total expenses in the $162 to $169 billion range and said its effective tax rate for the remaining quarters would be between 13% and 16%, assuming no changes to its tax landscape.

The tension behind the valuation debate is capex, or capital expenditures, which are spending on long-term assets such as data centers and computing infrastructure. Meta increased its 2026 capex guidance to a range of $125 billion to $145 billion, up from the prior $115 billion to $135 billion. In the guidance explanation, Meta tied the increase to expectations for higher component pricing and additional data center costs to support future year capacity. Meta said it expects capex during 2026 to include principal payments on finance leases, and it also stated it is monitoring legal and regulatory matters, including headwinds in Europe and the United States.

In its prediction article, 24/7 Wall St. linked the $2 trillion valuation scenario to earnings growth and multiple expansion. Multiple expansion refers to investors paying a higher price for the same earnings, often measured through forward P/E, where forward P/E is the stock’s price divided by expected earnings over a future period. The analysis said Meta was trading at roughly 14 times forward earnings and argued that reaching about $910 per share would require the market to apply something closer to a 22 times forward P/E, alongside continued earnings compounding in the 30%+ range.

The analysis also emphasized that Meta is trying to connect its spending to AI product momentum, citing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comment that the first quarter was “a milestone quarter” including the release of Meta Superintelligence Labs’ first model. Meta’s filings echo that theme, with the company presenting the AI work as part of its push toward “personal superintelligence.” However, neither Meta’s earnings release nor the prediction article spells out a timetable or metrics for when AI infrastructure investments will translate into sustained incremental monetization that can offset ongoing losses from Reality Labs.

What Meta has not made fully explicit is how quickly AI spending will reduce the drag from Reality Labs, or how specific legal outcomes could affect future costs and disclosures. In its outlook commentary, Meta said it is monitoring active legal and regulatory matters, including additional U.S. trials related to youth-related issues that “may ultimately result in a material loss.” With that uncertainty, the “$2 trillion” framing remains an investor-focused scenario rather than a commitment from Meta itself.

The next steps to watch are relatively concrete: Meta’s revenue guide for the second quarter ($58 to $61 billion), the direction of ad monetization indicates such as ad impressions and pricing (Meta reported both were up year over year in Q1), and whether capex ramps show clearer ROI as the year progresses. On the policy side, investors will be looking for updates on the regulatory and youth-related litigation that Meta says it is monitoring as outcomes that could materially affect results. For now, the market’s key question is whether higher spending accelerates durable earnings power fast enough to justify a higher valuation multiple.