Meta Platforms, Inc. (META)

(A Top Pick Feb 25/15. Up 32.3%.) The monthly average users is now 1.59 billion, and their daily users are over 1 billion, so the opportunity for reach is spectacular. This is a company that really can’t be analysed on traditional metrics. Hugely expensive and it has to grow into its earnings.

In many respects they have a better mouse trap from an advertising perspective than what Google does. Management is fearless and clearly a visionary. Strong balance sheet and rapid, rapid growth. Trading at 30X earnings, so it is a little bit rich, but they are knocking the ball out of the park. Thinks it could be the largest company in the world in a couple of years.

They continue to grow their user base and are currently at 1.55 billion at this time. Continuing to build out their other franchises such as Instagram Messenger and WhatsApp. Their competitive advantage in the social media space continues to be strong. Very strong global branding. Also, have very strong access to user data, so they can advertise to that.

1 in 7 people globally are on Facebook. They have over 1 billion active users on a daily basis. There is also WhatsApp (their communications app), Facebook Messenger and Instagram. It really comes down to when they start to monetize those vehicles.

Stock vs. Stock. FB-Q vs. V-N. FB-O has not been around for 20 years so you can’t do a seasonality chart. The stock is hanging in there while the market was actually going down. If it goes above 109 it will push it into all time highs. V-N is considered a technology stock as well and does well until the middle of February. Chances are good it will break to new highs. Buy now for a seasonal trade.

It is a very high multiple stock. She would shy away a value investor and turn to V-N.

Still really positive on this company. Very well positioned. Have done a great job of commercializing their business. The time spent on Facebook is disproportionate to the amount of money that advertisers spent in their favour. There is still a fair amount of white space for them to grow. They have an unrecognized growth in Virtual Reality. The Consumer Electronic Show is coming up next month and it is going to be all about Virtual Reality (VR).

He likes it very much and would recommend it at current levels. They have tremendous growth and tremendous reach. The metrics just smell of a Google or Apple of a number of years ago.

Bull Call Spread. On this you buy a Call and sell another call at a higher strike price. On this, you are paying out to Buy it, and ideally you want the stock to rise above the higher strike price. As it rises above that you make the maximum. If he is right, there is about a 200% upside.

Likes this. Trading at a pretty decent valuation at about 40X forward PE, but the growth rate is still very high at 25% plus. The PEG ratio is at around 1.5%-1.6%. There are lots of things happening in terms of their messenger service and their Instagram service. Before buying, you want to look at where the markets are going over the next little while. There might be an opportunity to get it a little bit cheaper, maybe at $100.

This is going to be a volatile stock. It is not cheap, but is growing very rapidly. Growing earnings at about 40% a year and trading at about 35X earnings, so its price to earnings growth metric is about 1X. Highly innovative company. Feels people are underestimating how much advertising revenue is going to start kicking in from Instagram. Probably not more than a year away from starting to monetize Whatsapp and Instant Messenger. They are going to get into shopping through Buy It Now buttons.

You can buy at these levels for a long term hold. Probably the most exciting Internet play out there, which is saying something, because their competition is stiff. Their model lines up alongside other models. They have 1.55 billion monthly average users, and over 1 billion daily average users. The future is bright.

Hadn’t believed that they could monetize the ad growth that they did. They have 1.5 billion users which is growing 14% year-over-year, if this can be monetized somehow. 57% FX neutral advertising revenue growth with 54% margins on that. 84% free cash flow growth. About a 3^rd of their assets are in cash equivalents.

The numbers were fantastic. They beat on every level. About $4.7 billion in revenue. The earnings beat as well, $0.57 versus $0.52. More importantly, the growth of engagement was fantastic, 1.55 billion average monthly users, and over 1 billion average daily users. Have started to monetize some of their other initiatives. This is a stock that you shouldn’t pay too much attention to the detail of the numbers. Just stand back and look at the broad strategic opportunity.

The Internet group is performing extremely well. As a company they are doing a great job of monetizing the traffic that goes through their site daily. He likes the US market as well. This sector is attracting new money.