"Meta finished 2024 with $39.2 billion in capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases. This measures up to total 2024 revenue of $164.5 billion, which was up 22% year over year. With capital expenditures coming in at 7% of revenue, this was already a sizable investment program. But when the company reported those 2024 results in January, management guided 2025 capital expenditures to a range of $60 billion to $65 billion, largely to support AI (artificial intelligence) and data center investments."
"The scale of this build-out is large enough that it has become increasingly challenging to treat Meta as the asset-light compounder it once was. Moving forward to the second quarter of 2025, management nudged its capex forecast for the year up to $66 billion to $72 billion, and the company noted that the midpoint implied roughly $30 billion of year-over-year capex growth."
Meta reported strong third-quarter revenue growth driven by higher ad impressions and ad prices, with operating income rising at a double-digit rate and the core business generating substantial cash. Capital expenditures rose to $39.2 billion in 2024, about 7% of revenue, and management significantly increased 2025 guidance to support AI and data-center investments. Subsequent guidance pushed 2025 capex toward $66–72 billion, implying roughly $30 billion of year-over-year growth at the midpoint. The large-scale infrastructure build-out shifts Meta away from an asset-light model and will meaningfully affect earnings power and investor expectations over coming years.
Read at The Motley Fool
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