10 Companies That Are Buying Back Their Stock in 2025

4. Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

Q3 2024 buybacks: $12.36 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 262

Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is a global technology company at the forefront of social media, digital advertising, and the metaverse. Best known for its platforms – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger – META connects billions of users worldwide while providing businesses with powerful advertising and engagement tools. The company is heavily investing in AI and VR/AR through its Reality Labs division, aiming to build the next generation of immersive digital experiences.

Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was among the top performers of 2024 with its share price up more than 40% in the last twelve months. The company ended 2024 with strong performance, reaching over 3.3 billion daily active users across its family of apps. Meta AI has emerged as the most widely used AI assistant, with more than 700 million monthly active users. Threads has shown significant growth, reaching more than 320 million monthly active users with over 1 million daily sign-ups. WhatsApp has gained momentum in the US with more than 100 million monthly active users, while Facebook maintains a strong global presence with over 3 billion monthly active users. The company announced substantial infrastructure investments, including plans to bring online almost a gigawatt of capacity in 2025 and build a 2-gigawatt AI data center. Meta’s 2025 capital expenditure is projected to be in the range of $60 billion to $65 billion, primarily focused on AI infrastructure and core business development.

The company’s spending policy in the last 2 years demonstrates that it has a myriad of reinvestment opportunities to build the AI infrastructure as well as fuel R&D in the AR/VR field. At the same time, the record financial performance has led to record operating cash flow generation, and it is reasonable to expect that some of the capital will be returned back to investors through stock repurchases, which might be a higher-ROI option than hoarding it on the balance sheet at a 4% money market rate. All in all, we believe the whopping $12.36 billion of repurchases in 3Q 2024 should not be interpreted as a negative signal for META.