Meta and Microsoft have kicked off 2025 with record-breaking financial results in the quarter ending last year. They have showcased their dominance in the tech world. Meta’s advertising boom and strong user engagement fueled its revenue surge, while Microsoft’s AI and cloud innovations drove its impressive growth.
Both tech giants are riding high, but whose numbers truly steal the show? Let’s dive into their revenue battle to find out.
Meta’s Revenue Boom Powered by Ads
Performance Summary
- Profit of $20.83 billion for Q4, marking a 49% increase from $14.02 billion in the same period last year.
- This translated to earnings of $8.02 per share, up from $5.33 per share a year ago. Revenue for the quarter grew by 21%, reaching $48.39 billion, compared to $40.11 billion in Q4
- For the entire 2024, revenue reached $164.5 billion, a 22% increase compared to 2023. Higher ad impressions and an increase in the average price per ad drove this growth.
Meta’s Family of Apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, saw strong user engagement. Daily active users reached 3.35 billion in December, marking a 5% year-over-year growth.
Rising Costs and AI Investment
While revenue soared, expenses also increased. Costs and expenses for the full year rose by 8% to $95.12 billion. In Q4 alone, Meta reported $25.02 billion in costs, including a $1.55 billion reduction in legal losses, which offset some expenses. Capital expenditures for the year totaled $39.23 billion.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed himself on Meta’s solid performance. He said,
“I expect 2025 to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to lead the way.”
Meta’s strong Q4 results reflect its ability to leverage advertising growth and user engagement while navigating rising costs. However, with significant investments in AI on the horizon, 2025 will be a key year for the company’s long-term vision.
Microsoft’s Robust Results Driven by AI and Cloud Growth
Microsoft also posted its financial results for the quarter ending December 31, 2024, fueled by strong performance in its AI and cloud segments. The performance snapshot is explained below:
- Revenue reached $69.6 billion, a 12% increase compared to the same period in 2023.
- Operating income grew 17% to $31.7 billion. Net income rose 10% to $24.1 billion, with earnings per share at $3.23.
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft noted,
“We are innovating across our tech stack and helping customers unlock the full ROI of AI to capture the massive opportunity ahead. Already, our AI business has surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $13 billion, up 175% year-over-year.”
Key Business Highlights
- The Productivity and Business Processes segment reported $29.4 billion in revenue, a 14% increase driven by strong demand for Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365.
- Intelligent Cloud revenue grew 19% to $25.5 billion, with Azure and other cloud services leading the growth with a 31% increase.
- The More Personal Computing segment remained flat at $14.7 billion, although search and advertising revenue grew by 21%, and Windows OEM revenue increased by 4%.
Cloud and AI Lead the Way
Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft said,
“This quarter Microsoft Cloud revenue was $40.9 billion, up 21% year-over-year. We remain committed to balancing operational discipline with continued investments in our cloud and AI infrastructure.”
Looking ahead, Microsoft expects Azure growth of 31-32% for the third fiscal quarter. At the same time, Hood also highlighted challenges with capacity constraints but remains optimistic about future growth opportunities.
In conclusion, Meta’s revenue grew by 21%, while Microsoft’s increased by 12% in the last quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Thus, Meta performed better!
Meta Vs Microsoft: Comparative Analysis of Emission Reduction and Net Zero Goals
Both Microsoft and Meta are committed to reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with ambitious goals aimed at achieving net-zero across their global operations and value chains. However, their emissions profiles and strategies show some key differences.
Meta’s Commitment to Net Zero Emissions
As per its latest sustainability report, in 2023, Meta’s net emissions equaled 7.4 million metric tons of CO2. Key commitments include:
- Reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 42% by 2031, compared to a 2021 baseline, and ensuring maximum suppliers adopt science-aligned GHG reduction targets by 2026.
- Keep Scope 3 emissions at or below 2021 levels by 2031.
- Since 2020, Meta has successfully maintained net zero emissions in its operations, and it is on track to achieve net zero across its entire value chain by 2030.
To address residual emissions, Meta is investing in both nature-based and technological carbon removal projects, which help mitigate climate change and provide broader environmental benefits, including enhanced biodiversity.
Scaling Renewable Energy
Renewable energy has played a pivotal role in Meta’s emissions reduction strategy.
- In 2023 alone, the company’s renewable energy initiatives helped cut operational emissions by 5.1 million tons of CO2e, while value chain emissions were reduced by 1.4 million tons of CO2e.
Through strategic partnerships with utilities such as Pacific Power and Dominion Energy, Meta has facilitated the addition of 2,600 MW of new wind and solar capacity in the U.S., making clean energy more accessible.
- As of 2023, Meta’s global renewable energy portfolio exceeded 11,700 MW, with over 6,700 MW of that capacity online in the U.S.
Data Center Efficiency and Carbon Removal Solutions
Meta’s data center facilities have achieved LEED Gold Certification or higher and are powered by 100% renewable energy to meet their electricity needs.
In addition, 91% of the construction waste generated by Meta’s data centers was recycled in 2023. Additionally, it reduces embedded carbon by extending hardware lifespan and using recycled plastics and metals, promoting a circular model to cut waste and carbon impact.
Meta also uses “green tariffs”, which allow the company to purchase renewable energy directly from electricity providers. This not only supports clean energy projects but also increases the accessibility of renewable resources to a wider customer base.
Microsoft’s Net Zero Goals: Renewable Energy and Carbon Removal Gains
In 2023, Microsoft made significant strides in its commitment to sustainability, expanding its contracted renewable energy portfolio to over 19.8 GW across 21 countries.
The company secured 5 million metric tons of carbon removal to reach net zero by 2030, balancing low, medium, and high-durability projects to meet long-term targets.
Scope Emissions
- Scope 3 emissions which account for over 96% of Microsoft’s total emissions rose by 30.9% in 2023.
- Overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 15.4 MtCO₂e in 2023, a 29.1% rise as compared to the 2020 baseline.
This increase was largely driven by upstream purchased goods and services and downstream use of sold products. However, as per Microsoft, it has achieved a 6% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions compared to its 2020 baseline by adopting renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives.
Data Centers Efficiency and Fleet Electrification
In its data centers, Microsoft has focused on maximizing energy efficiency. In 2023, its data centers achieved a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) score of 1.12, demonstrating the company’s commitment to minimizing energy use while optimizing operations.
Additionally, the company reduced its Azure hardware needs by 1.5%, minimizing embodied carbon in the process. It is also transitioning to a 100% electric fleet by 2030, with infrastructure development already underway at its Redmond headquarters.
Overall, both companies are taking significant steps toward reducing their carbon footprint. Meta is focused on keeping Scope 3 emissions steady while scaling renewable energy adoption, whereas Microsoft faces a rise in Scope 3 emissions which is a matter of concern.
Additionally, Microsoft’s total GHG emissions are significantly higher than Meta’s. Yet it’s continuing to prioritize its energy efficiency in its operations and decarbonize its supply chain to achieve its net zero goals.
The post Meta Vs. Microsoft: Who’s Leading the Q4 Revenue Game and Net Zero Goals? appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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