5 Latest Earnings That Surprised Wall Street

3. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 200

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It is a technology firm that operates through two segments – Family of Apps and Reality Labs. On July 27, the company posted a Q2 GAAP EPS of $2.46, falling short of market consensus by $0.09. The revenue declined 0.90% compared to the prior-year quarter, reaching $28.82 billion and missing Street consensus by $130 million. The stock declined about 3.4% as Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) posted its first revenue decline as a public company and said that Q3 revenue would fall below Street estimates by 6% to 14%. DZ Bank analyst Ingo Wermann on July 29 downgraded Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) to Sell from Hold with a $140 price target.

According to Insider Monkey’s data, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was part of 200 hedge fund portfolios at the end of March 2022, down from 224 funds in the preceding quarter. Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management featured as a prominent stakeholder of the company, with 11.19 million shares worth about $2.50 billion. 

Here is what Boyar Value Group has to say about Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“Corporate executives can have many different reasons for selling shares (anticipation of tax law changes, philanthropy, diversification, and much more), but the sheer number of billionaire founders who sold shares in 2021 should raise eyebrows and might well be signaling a market top. Bloomberg’s Ben Steverman and Scott Carpenter report not only that Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly known as Facebook) sold shares in his company almost every day last year but also that the founders of Google sold ~$3.5 billion worth of stock (the first time either Sergey Brin or Larry Page has sold shares since 2017).”