Meta Q2 Revenue Up 28% YoY, Net Profit Down 14%; Metaverse Losses Exceed $41.7 Billion, Capex Drags Shares

Meta reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $60.801 billion, up 28% year-on-year, and net profit of $15.848 billion, down 14% year-on-year. The Reality Labs segment posted a quarterly loss of $4.619 billion, widening about 2% year-on-year. Since the second quarter of 2024, the segment has accumulated a loss of $41.723 billion over 27 months. The Family of Apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, generated revenue of $60.370 billion, up 28% year-on-year, of which advertising revenue was $59.363 billion, up 27% year-on-year.

Research and development expenses were $21.656 billion, or 36% of revenue, up 67% year-on-year. Capital expenditure reached $31.08 billion, up 83% year-on-year. Total costs and expenses were $42.03 billion, up 55% year-on-year, including $2.40 billion in legal litigation-related expenses and $1.18 billion in severance costs related to the May 2026 layoffs. As of June 30, 2026, Meta had 75,472 employees, a decrease of 1% year-on-year. This count includes approximately 8,000 employees affected by the May 2026 layoffs, most of whom will no longer be counted as employees by the end of the third quarter.

As of the close on July 30, 2026, Meta's stock price was $585.61, down 1.31% from the previous day. After the earnings release, the stock fell in after-hours trading, erasing approximately $110.3 billion in market capitalization.

On the earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company is developing new personal agents that will serve as the foundation for future products and revenue streams. Zuckerberg said more details about the glasses product line will be announced at the Connect conference on September 23, 2026.

Since integrating Muse Spark, daily active users of the Meta AI assistant have grown by 60%, with a continuous week-on-week increase. Muse Spark 1.1, positioned as an agentic coding model with computer use, tool calling and multimodal understanding capabilities, has been made available via a public API. Meta plans to add enterprise-grade adaptation features to Muse Spark in the coming weeks. On the agent product line, Meta plans to launch personal agent products that can perform tasks on behalf of users around the clock, covering areas such as lifestyle, health and finance. For business agents, Meta has launched globally on WhatsApp and Messenger, with over 1 million businesses using the feature weekly, and is gradually expanding to Instagram.

Meta announced a strategic partnership with BlackRock to develop a 1-gigawatt data center in El Paso, Texas. The company narrowed its full-year capital expenditure forecast range to $130 billion to $145 billion, from the previous range of $125 billion to $145 billion.