Meta Platforms, Inc. (META)

He likes it. It does not pay a dividend so he does not own it in his fund. It owns some very valuable properties such as Instagram, which is the growth engine. They spent a billion dollars to acquire Instagram and 4 years later it is one of the fastest growing platforms. They also own Whatsapp. He sees upside, but growth will decelerate. They are investing in the trends of tomorrow.

She likes this. She sees very good earnings and revenue growth coming. Has decent valuations. This has a very strong management team, and has really been able to execute on all their plans. This is the kind of great long-term holding that you want.

(Market Call Minute.)

(A Top Pick Aug 27/15. Up 39.26%.) In the social media space, this has a very strong and considerable competitive advantage. The catalyst with this is what is going to happen with Instagram to monetize that space. WhatsApp is another business they own, and they will be able to monetize that business as well. Ever since this company IPO’d, they’ve only missed one quarterly earnings expectation.

Have in excess of 1.2 billion daily users. Very strong ROE generator. Even though the stock price is probably a bit overvalued, and the PE ratio is in the 70%-80% range, they are at least backing it up in earnings growth. Doing a great job of assimilating their acquisitions into their social media empire. He likes this a lot.

Owned this 5-6 months prior to its IPO when it was in the $25 range. He likes growth companies, but is not willing to pay above market multiples for them. A phenomenal company. They are the juggernaut in social media. They are going to continue to grow very strong. Valuation is too high for his type of investment. Trading at about 31X on estimated PEs.

You do want Internet exposure, and she has gone with Alphabet (GOOG-Q), because it is more valuation driven and this valuation is more reasonable. Facebook may have a slightly higher growth, but the valuation multiple is much higher. That means there is a lot of expectations built into it. Alphabet is the largest search engine, and is always going to generate a certain amount of Internet-based advertising. That is a secular growth area, and thinks it is going to continue to grow.

Stock splits are favourable. They just announced results where revenues grew 59%, up from the first quarter. Next year revenues are expected to grow 30%.

This has been a dominant player. What she is seeing in so many different spaces, is just how quickly industries are being disrupted, in how things are being done. This company is benefiting and they dominate mobile ads. Had good revenue performance in the last quarter. Has always been on the sidelines because of valuation.

(Market Call Minute.) Class C shares?

This is growing very rapidly. The metrics you want to concentrate on are the average monthly and average daily users, and they continue to rise. This is an advertiser’s dream, and Facebook is taking advantage of that with their mobile applications, and using the bolt-on applications that they have. They are also looking into the future. The future of video and virtual realities. There is a great future for this company.

You are always nervous about owning a company like this in front of earnings, because of any hiccup in the numbers. However, this is a great quality company. He would own this and Alphabet (GOOG-Q) together, because you then own the digital ad market basically. He would tend to be a Buyer on any weakness.

This reminds him a lot of Amazon (AMZN-Q). It is a category killer and is competing very strongly. They have 1.65 billion active users and revenue has grown by about 60%. 4/5ths of that is coming from the smart phone, as opposed to the desktop. He is very positive on the growth of their revenue.

Digital advertising is one of his favourite themes. There are no competitors that can stack up to this and Google (GOOGL-Q).

An interesting story. In the US these tech companies, in contrast to Canadian ones, don’t go public until so much of the money has been made already. A lot of the younger generation are now not signing up for Facebook. He thinks the company is a bit mature.