In this piece, we will take a look at the 5 tech stock picks of Cristan Black’s Empirical Capital. If you want more details about Mr. Black and his hedge fund, then head over to 10 Tech Stock Picks of Cristan Black’s Empirical Capital.
5. Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP)
Empirical Capital’s Holdings: $2.64 million
Percentage of Empirical Capital’s Portfolio: 2.77%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 78
Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP) is an American social media company known for its smartphone application Snapchat. This application allows its users to share highlights and events from their daily lives with friends and followers.
For its third quarter, Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP) revealed that it had earned $1 billion in revenue and $0.17 in non-GAAP EPS, beating analyst estimates for EPS only. Its price target was lowered to $65 by Morgan Stanley in November 2021, which was worried that the social media sector will face several headwinds in the upcoming year.
Mr. Black’s investment firm held 35,776 Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP) shares as of the end of Q3 2021, which were worth $2.64 million and represented 2.77% of its portfolio. 78 of the 867 hedge funds polled by Insider Monkey held stakes in the company during the third quarter of 2021.
Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital is Snap Inc.’s (NYSE:SNAP) biggest shareholder via holding 22 million shares worth $1.6 billion.
In its Q3 2021 investor letter, Jefferies Group mentioned Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP), stating that:
“We believe SNAP may be one of the best positioned virtual platforms in the development of the Metaverse. In order to better understand SNAP’s leadership position, we examine the significance of four key product areas; 1) the camera and augmented reality, 2) virtual avatars, 3) the Snap Map, and 4) hardware.
• Camera and Augmented Reality: SNAP distinguishes itself from its peers by building products that leverage camera and AR technology as the principal drivers of engagement and user generated content. Currently, SNAP has 290M+ DAUs who create on average 5B snaps per day, open the app on average 30 times per day, and regularly use AR lenses to communicate with friends and brands (200M+ DAUs using AR). As we mentioned in the “Virtual Platforms” section of this report, the Metaverse is enabled by platforms that provide the “picks and shovels for content creation, the ongoing maintenance of live experiences, user interface, and social interactions”. We believe SNAP is beginning to successfully democratize its AR tool sets through its recently launched Lens Studio and Camera Kit. We highlight that the Lens Studio enables a community of 200K+ creators to build their own AR experiences using their own machine learning models. The Camera Kit makes the tools from the Lens Studio interoperable with partner apps like Zoom, the MLB, and Disney. In our view, SNAP is one of few platforms making AR technology easily accessible both inside and outside its App, which should support the company’s AR leadership for years to come…”
