For most investors, how much a stock’s price changes over time is important. Not only can it impact your investment portfolio, but it can also help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
FOMO, or the fear of missing out, also plays a role in investing, particularly with tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you’d invested in Meta Platforms (META) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to META for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Meta Platforms’ Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let’s take a look at Meta Platforms’ main business drivers.
Meta Platforms is the world’s largest social media platform. The company’s portfolio offering evolved from a single Facebook app to multiple apps like photo and video sharing app Instagram and WhatsApp messaging app owing to acquisitions. Along with in-house developed Messenger, these apps now form Meta’s family of products used by almost 3.24 billion people on a daily basis as of Mar 31, 2024.
Headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, Meta generated revenues worth $134.9 billion in 2023. Advertisement accounted for 97.8% of revenues. Marketers buy ads that can appear on multiple platforms including Meta, Instagram, Messenger and third-party applications and websites.
Meta, thanks to its huge user base gained a significant market share in the advertising space wherein it faces tough competition from Google, Twitter, Amazon and Snapchat-parent Snap.
Meta also faces significant competition from the likes of Apple (messaging), YouTube (advertising and video), Bytedance (social media) and Tencent (messaging and social media).
Meta core app enables people to connect, share, discover and communicate with one other on mobile devices and personal computers. User engagement on core Meta platform is fostered by News Feed that displays an algorithmically-ranked series of stories and advertisements customized for each user.
Instagram is a community for sharing photos, videos and messages, enabling people to discover interests that they care about. People can express themselves through photos, videos and private messaging via Instagram Feed and Stories.
Messenger helps people to connect with friends, family, groups and businesses across platforms and devices. WhatsApp is a simple, reliable and secure messaging application, used by people and businesses around the world to communicate in a private way.
Meta also offers virtual reality (VR) products through its Oculus division.
Bottom Line
While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Meta Platforms ten years ago, you’re probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in October 2014 would be worth $7,941.48, or a 694.15% gain, as of October 17, 2024. Investors should keep in mind that this return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
The S&P 500 rose 213.65% and the price of gold increased 107.71% over the same time frame in comparison.
Looking ahead, analysts are expecting more upside for META.
Meta is benefiting from steady user growth across all regions, particularly Asia Pacific. Increased engagement for its offerings like Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook has been a major growth driver. META has been leveraging AI to improve the potency of its platform offerings. These services currently reach more than 3.2 billion people daily. User growth remained solid in the United States, with WhatsApp reaching more than 100 million monthly users and Thread approaching 200 million milestone. It witnessed good year-over-year growth across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Meta now expects to invest significantly more over the next few years in developing more advanced models and the largest AI services in the world. However, monetization of these AI services will take considerable time, which is a concern.
Over the past four weeks, shares have rallied 7.22%, and there have been 3 higher earnings estimate revisions in the past two months for fiscal 2024 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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