Meta Earnings Beat Can't Save META Stock as $25B Penalty and AI Spending Spook Wall Street
Meta’s earnings beat didn’t matter. Shares of Meta Platforms dropped about 3% in premarket trading Thursday, October 22, 2026, as investors weighed a triple hit: a stunning $25 billion penalty ordered by a New Mexico judge, a plan to issue non-voting shares, and a capital spending forecast of $135–145 billion to fund the company’s AI buildout. Meta was the first of the AI hyperscalers to report this quarter, and Wall Street didn’t like what it saw in the fine print. ...