Here is Hedge Fund’s Favorite Social Media Stock

The social networking market is a large space full of opportunities that companies can explore and take advantage of. According to previous reports, the value of this market amounts to as much as $9.0 billion and it is expected to grow as more and more people around the world get access to the Internet and can enjoy lower charges for data transfers. Among many companies that populate the modern social networking space, three stand out as leaders in terms of user growth and respectively, profitability. These companies are Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD), and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR). The most recent round of 13F filings showed an interesting change of trends. While Facebook kept itss position as the most popular stock among hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Twitter and LinkedIn traded places, as the former saw a significant decline in bullish sentiment from investors.

Let’s take each stock separately. As it has been already mentioned Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is the most popular social networking stock as 118 funds among those that we track reported holding $7.90 billion worth of the company’s shares, which also makes the company one of the most popular stocks among hedge funds that we track. During the fourth quarter of 2014, the number of funds went up from 104, but the amount of capital held by the funds that we track actually declined from $8.92 billion in the previous quarter. Among the funds that we track, the largest shareholder of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) was Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, which owned 13.50 million shares, valued at $1.05 billion. Additionally, among other investors betting on the stock are billionaires Ken Griffin, David Shaw, and Israel Englander.

Recently, Facebook launched the internet.org project in India, aimed towards offering free internet access for the lowest social classes, who can’t afford it otherwise. With the launch of this project, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) will be able to increase its userbase growth rate. Additionally, Facebook already enjoys a solid growth rate among mobile users. In its last financial report Facebook said it had around 1.39 billion monthly active users in 2014, up by 13% on the year and 1.19 million mobile monthly active users, an annual growth of 26%. Moreover, in 2014, the company’s revenue surged by 58% to $12.47 billion and diluted earning per share (EPS) grew to $1.10 from $0.60.