Meta/Facebook Q4 preview: What to expect?
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Meta Platforms/Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) is scheduled to announce Q4 earnings results on Wednesday, February 2nd, after market close.
The consensus EPS Estimate is $3.83 (-1.3% Y/Y) and the consensus Revenue Estimate is $33.44B (+19.1% Y/Y).
Over the last 1 year, FB has beaten EPS estimates 50% of the time and has beaten revenue estimates 100% of the time.
Over the last 3 months, EPS estimates have seen 3 upward revisions and 3 downward. Revenue estimates have seen 5 upward revisions and 4 downward.
Analysts expect monthly active users of 2.9B.

Looking back, the social media giant missed revenue estimates for the first time in years in Q3. It beat on profitability, though, with EPS growing 19% to $3.22.
The company had issued a downside Q4 guidance at the time, citing Apple's IOS 14 privacy changes as a factor. Non-ads revenue is also projected to decline year-over-year, after a strong comparable quarter last year driven by holiday season sales of the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset.
Jefferies notes that Apple privacy issues are still a challenge, but Meta seems to have made some progress on getting advertisers to adopt workaround solutions, so the worst may be behind.
Q4 will represent the firm's first report since its rebranding as a metaverse-first entity. The metaverse is a term CEO Mark Zuckerberg has used to encompass all of the company's opportunities that go beyond Facebook.
Facebook made the brand change to Meta in October, but continues to face regulatory scrutiny. The Federal Trade Commission is said to be reviewing internal research that showed its products may have harmful effects on users.
More recently, the commission also began investigating Oculus over potential anticompetitive action. Meanwhile, Meta lost a second bid to throw out the FTC's antitrust case against it in January.
Still, Meta has scratched up some wins. The EU's chief regulator gave conditional approval for its long-running $1B acquisition of Kustomer, a customer-service start-up that competes with companies like Zendesk.
Recent SA contributor analysis has also been largely bullish of Meta's prospects, citing strong portfolio strength and potential for shares to cross the $400 mark.