Meta's Q1 2026 revenue rose 33% to $56.31 billion; an $8.03 billion tax benefit lifted net income to $26.77 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 $56.31 billion for the first quarter of 2026, up 33% from $42.31 billion a year earlier, in its Form 10-Q, the quarterly report a US-listed company files with the SEC, filed Apr 30, 2026. Meta said advertising drove the rise, with ad impressions up 19% and the average price per ad up 12%; it said growth would have been 29% on a constant currency basis, a non-GAAP measure that removes exchange-rate effects. Operating income, the profit from running the business before interest and tax, was $22.87 billion, up 30% from $17.56 billion, and Meta tied higher costs mainly to infrastructure and employee pay.1^,2^,3^,4^,5^,6^,7^,8^,9^,10^,11

Net income was $26.77 billion, up 61% from $16.64 billion, and diluted earnings per share were $10.44 against $6.43. The quarter included an $8.03 billion income tax benefit that Meta recognized as a result of the US Treasury's Notice 2026-7 of Feb 18, 2026, which gave relief from the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax; Meta said the benefit partly offsets the $15.93 billion charge recorded in the third quarter of 2025. Meta's earnings release said diluted earnings per share would have been $3.13 lower without the benefit.12^,13^,14^,15^,16^,17^,18^,19

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO, called it a milestone quarter that included the release of the first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. Research and development expenses rose $5.55 billion, or 46%, in the quarter from a year earlier, which Meta tied mainly to employee pay and infrastructure costs, including for its AI initiatives. Capital expenditures, which include principal payments on finance leases, were $19.84 billion in the quarter. Meta said it anticipated capital expenditures of $125-145 billion for 2026, up from a prior range of $115-135 billion, citing higher component pricing and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs. Meta said it had significantly increased infrastructure investments for its AI initiatives, including third-party cloud capacity, servers, data centers and network infrastructure, and expected them to keep rising.20^,21^,22^,23^,24

At Mar 31, 2026, Meta had $237.67 billion of non-cancelable contractual commitments, mostly for third-party cloud capacity and infrastructure, plus lease obligations of about $182.88 billion on leases that had not yet begun, covering data centers, colocations and network infrastructure. In April 2026 it signed more multi-year infrastructure contracts that raised the commitments by about $24 billion. Reality Labs had revenue of $402 million, down 2%, with lower Meta Quest sales partly offset by higher sales of AI glasses. Meta repurchased no shares in the quarter; the cash flow statement in its earnings release showed $12.75 billion spent on repurchases of its Class A stock in the same quarter a year earlier.25^,26^,27^,28^,29^,30^,31^,32^,33

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.34^,35