Meta Platforms, Inc. (META)

Loves Meta for its 16x 2024 PE.

Megatech offers investors resilence in a higher-for-longer interest rate environment. Not not-profitable tech or consumer discretionary. Energy is another sector that offers this confidence, but no other sectors.

They delivered amazing numbers in their last report, crushing the numbers, to show how much money they can make in advertising. He expects the first of many great quarters, but traders think it's done. Wrong. Buy now.

The market is okay, not great nor bad, and it's a trading market. Meta was down $9, so he bought a trading position after shaving it a month ago.

More room to run. Beat last quarter on all sorts of metrics. Most analysts have raised EPS estimates in the last 30 days. A must-own. Despite all the hype, not a crazy multiple of 20x 2024, growing at 20%. Still good value.

They reported a good quarter after the bell: good cash flow, strong ad revenues and better than expected engagement. AI was a key driver.

Up 183% this year. When the Fed began to raise rates last year, the CEO was the first to cut costs (jobs) and this has driven this outperformance.

A year ago, nobody touched this. Meta has sourced open sourced AI unlike Microsoft which is closed. Many developers like Meta's. He targets $320.

There's a lot more room to run with these FAANG names. Trades around 24x 2024, but has 24% growth rate ahead. AI is a tailwind and Tik Tok could be less of a competitor.

It makes sense for someone to trim their holdings, after the strong move Meta has had. Meta is in better shape than at its peak, because at that time the company didn't realize that all their attention shouldn't have been on the metaverse and they had hired too many employees. Cost cutting and monetizing Instagram and Whatsapp are all good moves. Trades at a reasonable PE still.

She took profits after Meta swelled to 8% of her portfolio to control risk. A year ago, Meta was trading at 11x forward PE, but that's now 21x. That's a big re-rating. A lot of the good news is baked into the share price now. She still owns a lot of shares. Digital ads rose 4% YOY last quarter. It's prudent to take profits; never wrong to take profits.

It saw an upgrade today. Quality has always been there, momentum has returned to the stock, and management is executing on the activist's playback (cost efficiency with little talk of the metaverse, thankfully). With Apple introducing their VR headset, how will Meta compete and spend on that? Will that add to earnings?

It saw an upgrade today. Last year, it traded at 11x forward PE, and now it's at 21x. Quite a jump. Yes, we got the cost-cutting, so now the story is about revenues. In the second half of the year there could be double-digit growth. She likes the Facebook brand, and Reels is monetizing nicely and could rise further. She trimmed her position last week to be prudent.

Does not currently own shares.
Worried about future of company with Metaverse distraction.
Hard to predict future of business.
More reliable investment options out there.
Better options for A.I. exposure.