Meta Platforms is set to report its Q2 earnings after the market close on Wednesday, July 29, under a cloud of investor pessimism driven by massive artificial intelligence spending and lackluster stock performance. Shares have fallen roughly 16% over the past 12 months, with only Microsoft lagging more among the Magnificent Seven, dropping 24% in the last year.

Disputed figures exist for Meta's year-to-date performance, with some sources indicating a decline of nearly 10% and others reporting more than 8%. The company's forward price-to-earnings ratio stands near 20.1x, below its three-year average of 23x, while the MarketBeat consensus price target is near $836, implying potential upside of over 30%.

Investors are divided over Meta's capital expenditure plans. One source claims Meta plans to spend upwards of $145 billion this year, largely on data center build-out. Another source reports that Meta raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance to a range of $125 billion to $145 billion. In Q2 alone, capital expenditures are set to increase 100% to $33.15 billion.

Meta's heavy spending comes as it remains the only hyperscaler without a cloud computing business. However, the company is reportedly exploring a $10 billion cloud computing deal with Anthropic. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that Meta is exploring leasing out data center capacity to customers.

Meta recently debuted the Muse Spark 1.1 AI model with pricing at $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens, undercutting Anthropic's Opus 4.8 model, which charges $5 and $25 respectively. Analysts will watch for discussions of "cloud," "Ray-Ban," "silicon," and other keywords — Kalshi traders assign 90% odds that Meta management will say "cloud" on the earnings call as a matter of market speculation.

For Q2 2026, consensus estimates vary among sources. Bloomberg consensus estimates Meta EPS of $7.14 and revenue of $60.23 billion; Street consensus estimates GAAP EPS of $7.22 and revenue of $60.3 billion; analysts expect adjusted EPS of $7.20 and revenue of $60.21 billion. This compares to Meta's Q2 2025 results of $7.14 EPS and $47.51 billion revenue. Advertising revenue for Q2 is projected at $58.99 billion, up 26% from a year ago.

Meanwhile, peers Alphabet and Tesla plunged after their earnings — Tesla crashed over 14% on July 23, while Alphabet reported 82% year-over-year growth in its cloud business. Meta's Q1 2026 revenue rose 33% year-over-year, its fastest growth since 2021, but adjusted EPS benefited from an unusual tax benefit.