Meta sales rose 26%. Free cash flow was a negative $2.1 billion, and the stock fell 7%.

Meta Platforms said on Wednesday that revenue rose 26%, to $64.60 billion. Free cash flow, the cash left after the company buys its buildings and servers, was negative $2.12 billion. A year earlier that same quarter produced $10.63 billion.

The Class A shares, the ones that trade on the Nasdaq, fell 7% on Thursday, from a Wednesday close of $697.52 to $648.85. The Nasdaq itself fell 2.6%. Meta closed Friday at $642.62. A household holding 100 shares is looking at about $5,500 off the quote since Wednesday.

Meta is the Menlo Park company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Mark Zuckerberg founded it and still runs it. In September, 3.64 billion people used at least one of the apps on an average day, up 3% from a year earlier. Advertising brought in $63.06 billion. The company served 10% more ads and charged 14% more for each one. Advertisers paid more. After the equipment bill, the company still spent more cash than the business produced.

That bill was the build. Meta spent $33.94 billion on property and equipment in the quarter, plus $964 million in finance-lease payments. Cash from the business was still $32.79 billion. Subtract the equipment and the quarter is negative. Reuters called it the company's first cash burn in more than a decade. For all of 2026, Meta now expects capital spending of $135 billion to $145 billion. The top of that range stayed put. The floor rose by $5 billion.

The payroll moved the other way. Headcount was 66,775 at the end of September, down 15% from a year earlier. The quarter that paid for more machines also employed fewer people. If the shares in an offer letter were priced when the staff was larger and the stock was higher, both of those numbers have already moved.

The profit line includes a legal bill. Meta booked $9.89 billion this quarter toward an agreement with 52 attorneys general over teen mental health and social media. The agreement can reach about $18.59 billion. Diluted earnings were $3.83 a share. The company said that without the charge, they would have been $7.40. Operating margin was 20%, against 40% a year ago. The charge is a check the company expects to write. The servers are a different one.

The share you hold is about to come with a twin. On October 19 the board approved a new class of stock that cannot vote, Class C, after a committee of independent directors recommended it. Shareholders approved it the next day. The charter takes effect January 19. Each outstanding Class A share, and each Class B share, is then due one Class C share.

The board still has to set the payment date. Under Zuckerberg's agreement with the company, that date is no later than five business days after January 19. Class A is the stock in an ordinary brokerage account. Class B is the stock he uses to keep voting control. The new shares do not vote.

The board said the new class is meant to keep Zuckerberg leading Meta while the company invests for the long term. He can sell 20% of the Class C he receives without giving up votes. The other 80% stays tied to his voting stock. It comes free at 2.5% a quarter, across eight years, if he spends the whole quarter as a full-time executive or as executive chair. He also agreed, for eight years from October 20, to keep living in California, or wherever the company keeps its headquarters, and only while he stays in that job. The agreement lets him leave if something serious and unforeseen makes staying unwise.

The residency promise lands just before a state vote. On November 3, Californians vote on Proposition 40. California's Legislative Analyst's Office, which writes the official voter guide, says a yes vote would put a one-time tax of 5% of net worth on billionaires who lived in the state on January 1, due in 2027. Publicly traded stock counts in that net worth. A house, a pension, and a retirement account generally do not. MarketWatch reported that Zuckerberg told directors he might need to sell voting shares if the tax passed, and that he had considered leaving the state. The taxpayer on that form has a net worth of at least $1 billion.

If your Class A shares have already vested, you are in line for the matching Class C share. If the grant has not vested, the equity portal is where you learn whether the award gets adjusted. Nobody knows what the new share will trade for until it exists, and the old share's price will move when it does. The figure that matters for tax is the one on the day the shares vest. RSU Vest-Day Playbook for Diaspora Households is the vest date, the withholding, and where the cash goes in a household that also sends money home. If the headcount cut reaches your team, Layoff, Severance, and Runway When Family Depends on You is the months after the job ends.

Open the equity portal before you treat Wednesday's sales figure as the paycheck. See whether the next vest is still one share, and put Friday's price beside the money the household already sends.

This is educational reporting on Meta's October 21 results, its October 21 filing on the new share class, and the Legislative Analyst's description of Proposition 40. It is not investment, tax, or employment advice. Free cash flow is the company's own non-GAAP measure. A vest confirmation and a tax adviser set the number that hits your account.