Jim Cramer’s Top 5 Stock Picks for 2023

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

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 177

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is a communication services company based in Menlo Park, California. The company engages in the distribution of social media services worldwide.

BofA analyst Justin Post holds a Buy rating on Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) shares as of February 13.

Cramer believes that while Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) performed poorly in 2022, it can mount a comeback this year by either continuing to invest in the metaverse or by diverting its budget to other segments like WhatsApp. On February 1, the company announced a $40 billion share buyback program. The next day, the stock rose from $153 to $197, adding about $100 billion to its market capitalization.

A total of 177 hedge funds were long Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in the third quarter, with a total stake value of $14.2 billion.

Investment management company Vulcan Value Partners mentioned Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its fourth-quarter 2022 investor letter. Here’s what the firm said:

“During the quarter we sold Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) after owning the business for over four years. The fundamentals of our investment case were based on the tremendous number of users that spent time on its various properties and the advertising dollars that flowed to the company as a result. We believed its competitive advantage was that the platform was, more or less, a monopoly on people’s time and attention. The rise of TikTok and other emerging platforms has given us pause on the company’s ability to maximize that advantage. From our perspective, the idea of “one platform to rule them all” may now be a thing of the past as social offerings have become more fragmented.

In addition, though our research has indicated that much of the initial damage done from Apple’s iOS 14.5 privacy changes has been repaired, we remain concerned with Apple’s influence over the digital advertising ecosystem. Apple is one of the largest gatekeepers to Meta’s mobile services, and it has become more difficult for us to gauge the pace of change emerging from Apple relating to privacy, as well as evaluating Apple’s ambitions in advertising…” (Click here to read the full text)

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