Meta reports $51.24 billion in revenue for Q3 2025; a one-time tax charge cuts net income to $2.71 billion

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, from public records. Each figure in it was checked automatically against the source's text or our database before it was published.

Meta Platforms reported revenue of $51.24 billion for the third quarter of 2025, up 26% on a year earlier, in its Form 10-Q, the quarterly report a US-listed company files with the SEC, filed Oct 30, 2025. Meta said the increase came from advertising, with ad impressions up 14% and the average price per ad up 10%. Operating income, the profit from running the business before interest and tax, was $20.54 billion, up 18% from $17.35 billion a year earlier, and Meta said higher costs came mainly from employee pay, infrastructure and legal-related costs.1^,2^,3^,4^,5^,6^,7^,8^,9

Net income was $2.71 billion, a fall of 83% from $15.69 billion a year earlier, and diluted earnings per share were $1.05 against $6.03. The drop came from a tax charge: Meta recorded a one-time income tax charge of $15.93 billion, and its effective tax rate for the quarter was 87%. The charge was tied to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on Jul 4, 2025, and included a valuation allowance, a reserve against US federal deferred tax assets the company may not be able to use. Meta's earnings release said net income would have been $18.64 billion without the charge; that is the company's own comparison, not a reported figure.10^,11^,12^,13^,14^,15^,16^,17^,18

Research and development expenses rose $3.97 billion, or 35%, in the quarter from a year earlier, which Meta tied mainly to employee pay and infrastructure costs supporting its AI initiatives. Reality Labs, the segment for Meta's virtual, augmented and mixed reality hardware, software and content, had revenue of $470 million, up 74%, mostly from sales of Meta Quest and AI glasses. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO, said in the earnings release that Meta Superintelligence Labs had started well.19^,20^,21^,22^,23

The report's notes say Meta completed an investment in Scale AI in June 2025 by acquiring a non-voting minority of its equity; $13.79 billion, part of what Meta gave for the stake, was recorded in non-marketable equity investments under the measurement alternative method, and Meta said it did not have significant influence over Scale AI's operations. In October 2025, after the quarter ended, Meta entered a joint venture with an affiliate of funds managed by Blue Owl Capital to co-develop a data center campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana; Meta held 20% and the Blue Owl affiliate 80% after the closing. Meta also entered multi-year third-party cloud capacity arrangements in October 2025 for approximately $40 billion in total, and it said it expected capital expenditures of $70 billion to $72 billion in 2025 and significant growth in 2026.24^,25^,26^,27^,28

We hold the text of this report's management discussion and notes, not its other exhibits, and our records keep one value for each period, the latest filed, so they cannot show whether the year-earlier figures were restated.29^,30