5 Stocks with the Biggest Buybacks

3. Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META)

Stock Buybacks in 12 Months Through September 2023: $26B

According to S&P Dow Jones Indices data, Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) had about $26 billion in stock repurchases in the one-year period ending September 2023. In early 2023, Meta Platforms Inc’s (NASDAQ:META) board of directors approved $40 billion in share repurchases. In 2022, the Facebook parent spent about $28 billion on share buybacks.

As of the end of the third quarter of 2023, 234 hedge funds out of the 910 funds tracked by Insider Monkey had stakes in Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META).

Wedgewood Partners stated the following regarding Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter:

“Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was a leading contributor to performance for the quarter – and the year. Core advertising revenue growth accelerated to +23% while operating margin rebounded strongly from a year ago. The Company has been a consistent beneficiary of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past several years, investing aggressively in deep learning recommendation systems that help power its products, which reach nearly half the population of the planet. Meta Platform’s AI investments, combined with its massive scale, allow the Company to quickly spin up new products across its digital advertising real estate to reinforce its competitive positioning. For example, the Company’s relatively new Reels product is just over two years old, yet it has driven a +40% increase in the time Instagram users spend on the app. Reels content and other content served up to Instagram users is often driven by several very large and expensive AI recommendation systems that must sort through billions of datapoints in real time and come up with a probability of a user engagement. The Company is one of the few companies that has been able to consistently and profitably monetize AI technologies for shareholders and we continue to hold it has a top position in our portfolios.”