2. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 248
Facebook, a Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) subsidiary, is the leading social commerce platform, followed by Instagram. Facebook has a Marketplace, individual seller groups, and official pages of multiple brands who use the platform to sell their products. Facebook and Instagram enable buyers to interact with brands and sellers via Messenger and Instagram direct messages, or smaller brands link their WhatsApp numbers to their pages, which makes Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB)’s social networking sites the best and most integrated social shopping platforms.
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB)’s Facebook has 2.80 billion monthly active users, and a daily traffic of 1.84 billion users, as of Q3 2021. Instagram users also crossed over 2 billion in December 2021.
Loop Capital analyst Alan Gould on December 20 lowered the price target on Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) to $380 from $420 but kept a Buy rating on the shares. The magnitude of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB)’s spending on the Metaverse over the next several years and how rapidly the spending at Facebook Reality Labs will increase from the $10 billion being spent in 2021 will be a key focus for investors, according to the analyst.
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is one of the most popular stocks among the smart money. In Q3 2021, 248 hedge funds were bullish on Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), with stakes valued at over $38.5 billion. Fisher Asset Management is the largest Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) stakeholder, with a $2.56 billion position.
Here is what Canterbury Tollgate has to say about Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) in its Q3 2021 investor letter:
“To say traditional media is anti-Facebook would not be an overstatement. An already intense and multi-year critique of (or attack on) Facebook has ratcheted up in recent weeks. Facebook’s research efforts have been reported on, if often derided, for nearly a decade. Going back to 2014, Slate.com called their research practices “unethical” when FB tried to study the impact social posts had on users. Now those efforts have been turned against them for the kill shot.
My job is to observe, assess, and allocate. Not to commentate on all the whims and wishes of media narrative. However, in the case of Facebook I cannot avoid going into some detail re: the onslaught against them, which I find to be most unwarranted and insincere.
Last month the Wall Street Journal ran a five-piece series titled “The Facebook Files” which allegedly shows how toxic Instagram is for teens. The foundation of their argument was a single slide from an internal presentation claiming, based on FB’s own research, that of teens who had a negative self-image, one-third said Instagram “made them feel worse.”iii Somehow the implication here is that this is not an inescapable aspect of either the human psyche and/or society-at large, but that it is of Facebook’s doing…” (Click here to see the full text)
