New York, Feb 23, 2026, 10:56 EST — Regular session
- Meta shares fall with big tech as tariff uncertainty returns
- A Wells Fargo note nudges up a Meta price target and sticks with an Overweight view
- Focus stays on AI infrastructure spending and how much cash it really eats
Meta Platforms (META) shares fell 1.5% to $646.05 in morning trading on Monday, after closing Friday at $655.66, as tech stocks slid on tariff uncertainty after President Donald Trump announced a new 15% global levy. “You simply can’t bet against Trump. He wants tariffs, and he’s going to find a way to implement them,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital LLC. (Reuters)
For Meta, the timing is awkward. Tariffs and the threat of retaliation can chill corporate budgets, and that usually shows up fast in advertising demand. Meta still lives on ads, even as it pours cash into new computing gear.
Meta has also asked investors to tolerate a heavier cost base while it chases bigger AI ambitions. In January, it forecast 2026 capital expenditures — money spent on equipment and buildings, including data centers — of $115 billion to $135 billion and total expenses of $162 billion to $169 billion. “This is going to be a big year for delivering personal superintelligence,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts then. (Reuters)
One upbeat datapoint arrived anyway. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski raised his price target on Meta to $856 from $849 and kept an Overweight rating, arguing that “compute capacity is emerging as the critical determinant of success.” (TipRanks)
A Wall Street Journal analysis published Monday took aim at how much of Meta’s cash gets spoken for before investors ever see it. It said cash costs tied to employee stock awards consumed about 96% of Meta’s reported 2025 free cash flow — a widely used yardstick for cash left after capital spending — and helped explain why the company added debt as it built data centers. “We can delude ourselves for a while that this is not a real cost, but we’re only fooling ourselves at the end of the day,” said Kevin Koharki, an accounting professor at Purdue University. (mint)
Meta’s AI push is also tied to chip supply. Nvidia said last week it signed a multiyear deal to sell Meta millions of its current and future AI chips, including Blackwell and forthcoming Rubin processors, along with central processors that compete with Intel and AMD. Nvidia did not disclose a value for the deal. (Reuters)
Cost discipline keeps creeping into the story, too. Meta reduced its annual distribution of stock options by about 5% for most staff, the Financial Times reported earlier this month, and the company declined to comment, Reuters reported. (Reuters)
Shareholders have another date marked: Meta’s board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.525 per share, payable on March 26 to shareholders of record as of March 16, the company said. (PR Newswire)
But the easy read — “AI spending now, payback later” — breaks down if the economy hits a tariff wall. Any wobble in ad demand would land on a company already running a high-cost buildout, and investors can turn quick when margins start to look less “temporary.”
What’s next is mostly outside Menlo Park. Traders are watching for follow-through on tariffs and for Nvidia’s results on Wednesday, Feb. 25, as a sentiment check on the AI trade. (Investors)
