5 Best Metaverse Stocks to Buy

3. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 184

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is the communications services giant led by Mark Zuckerberg and responsible for the operation of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The company changed its name from Facebook to its current name quite recently, to signal the beginning of the next chapter of the internet, according to Zuckerberg, who spent $10 billion to build the metaverse in 2021 alone.

Cowen’s John Blackledge holds an Outperform rating on shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) as of October 13. The analyst also placed a $205 price target on the stock.

Gene Munster, an analyst at Loup Ventures, commented this October that Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is set to become one of the leaders in the tech sector. The analyst believes that looking forward, after interest rate increases slow down and investors begin betting on riskier stock returns again, the company would be well-positioned to become a leading tech stock.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was found among the 13F holdings of 184 hedge funds in the second quarter. Their total stake value was $18.2 billion.

Wedgewood Partners, an investment management company, mentioned Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its third-quarter 2022 investor letter. Here’s what the firm said:

“Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) detracted from performance during the quarter. Meta’s advertising revenue grew +3% (currency-adjusted) over 2021 and is up +70% since 2019 (pre-pandemic). The shift of advertisers and consumers to social media has been fairly dramatic and sticky. The Company reported $2.88 billion “daily active people” of its Family of Apps (as of June 2022) and is +35% higher than the comparable month pre-COVID (June 2019). Meta also serves over 10 million advertisers which is up from 8 million in January 2020. In spite of these impressive gains, the stock now trades at absolute levels well below where it traded before the pandemic. We suspect much of the market’s concern revolves around slowing revenue growth. It is fairly evident that there was a tremendous pull-forward of demand for many businesses and services over the past couple of years, and that the normalization of revenue growth from that “pull-forward” is hardly an existential crisis. Further, while Meta’s profit margins have fallen below pre-pandemic levels, it’s important to note that the Company likely hired well in excess of what it needed because it assumed the pandemic induced growth would continue. Meta has plenty of room to moderate its expense base and drive significant value by repurchasing shares at today’s historically depressed multiples.”