We recently published a list of 10 Best Long Term Tech Stocks to Buy Right Now. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stands against other best long term tech stocks to buy right now.

As per Deloitte, amidst uncertainties and economic turbulence, the broader technology industry can see growth in 2025, courtesy of elevated IT spending, AI investments, and a strong emphasis on innovation. Some analysts expect that global IT spending is expected to grow by 9.3% in 2025, with data center and software segments anticipating to increase at double-digit rates. Notably, worldwide spending on AI is projected to increase at a CAGR of 29% from 2024 to 2028.

Spending To Go Northwards, Says S&P Global

S&P Global sees global IT spending to increase by 9% in 2025, reflecting an improvement from the low 8% area in 2024, with AI spurring massive data center spending and enterprises renewing their investments in traditional hardware. The enterprises have been entering 2025 with a transition to the cloud, and they are slowly accelerating their investments in GenAI projects. The rating agency opines that hardware spending is expected to improve significantly in 2025.

The server shipments are expected to increase ~4% but revenue growth will be significantly higher considering high AI server ASPs. The firm sees network equipment and mobile telecom equipment makers returning to growth while storage sales are expected to grow ~4%. Hyperscale cloud providers are expected to sustain strong revenue growth of over 20%, and the rest of IT services can recover with a growth of ~5% after lackluster performance over the previous 2 years. S&P Global sees this recovery due to the early signs of demand stabilization during Q2 2024 and Q3 2024, with several IT service providers reporting growth in bookings for large transformation projects and improving annual contract values in critical verticals.

READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In.

Key Trends for 2025

In 2025, Capgemini expects AI and GenAI to have a significant impact on companies’ priorities and also on several adjacent technology domains, including robotics, supply chains, and tomorrow’s energy mix. Autonomous intelligent systems continue to be more prevalent in performing certain tasks. The next step will be the rise of a ‘super-agent,’ who can orchestrate and optimize several AI systems. In 2025, such advancements are expected to allow new AI ecosystems throughout industries.

The businesses have been navigating complex and unpredictable market conditions. As per Capgemini, technologies such as AI, data, blockchain, IoT, and connectivity with terrestrial-satellite networks can help enhance cost efficiency, resilience, agility, and sustainability of supply chains. Furthermore, additional regulatory and environmental constraints are expected to make this pivot important to ensure competitiveness, agility, and resilience.

Our Methodology

To list the 10 Best Long Term Tech Stocks to Buy Right Now, we used a screener to shortlist the stocks catering to the broader technology sector. Next, we filtered out the ones that have at least 10%-12% revenue growth over the past 10 years and are popular among hedge funds. Finally, the stocks are arranged in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment, as of Q4 2024.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

10-Year Revenue Growth: ~29.4%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 262

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is building technology that helps people connect and share, find and build communities, and grow businesses.  Benchmark analyst Mark Zgutowicz upgraded the company’s stock to “Buy” from “Hold,” providing a price objective of $820, lauding a strong 2025 core business outlook. As per the analyst, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)’s AI infrastructure investments and core ad strength provide several growth catalysts for 2025 and beyond. Elsewhere, Morningstar expects the company’s sales to grow at a CAGR of 12% for the upcoming 5 years, courtesy of an increase in average revenue per user, and higher user growth.

The firm expects Reality Labs sales to increase at a double-digit rate over the upcoming 5 years. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)’s core advertising business continues to benefit from improved ad targeting and content recommendation algorithms and a secular increase in digital advertising spending. Thanks to the company’s scale, it can access high-quality user data, which it can package and sell to advertisers. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) has an opportunity to fuel more ad inventory growth, through new products including Threads while, at the same time, enhancing its ads monetization on more nascent features like Stories and Reels.

Rowan Street Capital, an investment management company, released its Q4 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:

“Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META): Investment Initiated: April 2018: Internal Rate of Return (IRR*): 22% *IRR represents the annualized rate of return on an investment, accounting for the timing and magnitude of cash flows over the holding period.

For META, our 22% IRR aligns closely with the company’s compounded growth in earnings per share (EPS) and free cash flow per share during the 6 years holding period.

Looking ahead, Meta is expected to grow its revenues, earnings, and free cash flow per share at mid-teens rates over the next two years. There’s a good possibility that it could exceed these estimates, considering the breadth of growth initiatives currently in place, such as advancements in Al, monetization of Reels, expansion into business messaging, and the ongoing development of the metaverse…” (Click here to read the full text)

Overall, META ranks 3rd on our list of best long term tech stocks to buy right now. While we acknowledge the potential of META as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued AI stock that is more promising than META but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.