Meta’s Stock Jumps After Q4 Report Despite Uncertain Future
By Movieguide® Contributor
Meta’s stock jumped after its Q4 report revealed better results than expected, but Wall Street still has questions about the future of the company.
The company posted a quarterly revenue of $48.39 million, up 21%, along with a net income of $20.8 million, up 49%. It also saw daily active users across all of its platforms rise 5% to 3.35 billion.
Not all news was good, however, as hours before its earnings report was released, Meta settled a lawsuit with President Donald Trump, agreeing to pay him $25 million for banning him in 2021. Meta has denied any wrongdoing in its actions, and this payment is seen as the company attempting to thaw relations with the president as he begins his second term.
Since Trump was reelected into office, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has worked hard to renew his company’s relationship and build a connection with the president. He donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the event, sitting near the president’s family.
More importantly, Meta has made significant changes in its policies, undoing years of policy to further appease Trump. The largest change is doing away with fact-checking in favor of a community notes system similar to X’s.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I gave a speech in Georgetown five years ago about the importance about protecting free expression, and I still believe this today,” Zuckerberg said earlier this month. “We’re reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
READ MORE: LOVE IT OR HATE IT, META DITCHED FACT-CHECKING. WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
While this change may prove to be beneficial for these platforms, many users felt blindsided by the abrupt change, sparking user outrage which plays into Wall Street’s uncertainty about the company’s future.
Furthermore, earlier this week, the AI world was shaken up when China released its DeepSeek LLM which can outperform ChatGPT at a fraction of the price to train. This was bad news for Meta as the company has spent billions of dollars trying to create its own AI system to compete but was undercut by DeepSeek.
Nonetheless, for now, Wall Street still views Meta as a safe bet, proven by its rise after the release of its promising Q4 report.
READ MORE: MASSIVE META AI UPDATE HITS FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM AND WHATSAPP
- Content: +3Share:
- Content: +1