The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Communication Services company by 0.93% to 173.9 million shares with purchase of 1.61 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 7.84% valued currently at $61.56 billion. In addition, Fidelity Management & Research Co raised its holdings by 4.08 million to 121.51 million shares. And BlackRock Fund Advisors has lifted its position by 0.73% or 0.75 million shares – to 103.64 million shares.
Currently, there are 2.25B common shares owned by the public and among those 2.21B shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 600 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 190 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 1,699,704 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 410 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 1,510,856 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Meta Platforms Inc are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and Fidelity Contrafund. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 69.67 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $24.66 billion. The company bought an additional 6202.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.14% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 27697.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 54.2 million shares valued at over $19.18 billion and representing 2.44% of the shares outstanding. Fidelity Contrafund now owns shares totaling to 1.86% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 384.36, up 1.95%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 3.73% and 20.97% over the past three months. META shares are trading 8.33% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 188.26% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $132.14 and touched a high of $377.06 over the same period. META has an average intraday trading volume of 18.05 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 7.04%, 12.30%, and 29.70% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META) shares accounts for 66.52% of the company’s 2.25B shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 31.21%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 46.12% and 1.97% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $985.42B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.15. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 33.85, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $11.33. The company has a PEG of 0.96 and a Quick Ratio of 2.57 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 0.26. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.07% over the week and 2.04% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Meta Platforms Inc (META) will achieve an EPS of $4.97 for the current quarter, $3.58 for the next quarter and $17.55 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $4.37 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $6.94. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $1.76 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 67.33%, and 23.09% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of 35.10% over the next five years, compared to 9.76% over the past 5-year period.
Looking at the support for the META, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Wells Fargo stated their Overweight rating for the stock in a research note on January 17, 2024, with the firm’s price target at $402-$438.
