5 Tech Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire Philippe Laffont

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

Coatue Management’s Stake Value: $829,930,000

Percentage of Coatue Management’s 13F Portfolio: 3.37%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 248

Philippe Laffont, via Coatue Management, owns 2.44 million shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), worth $829.93 million, representing 3.37% of the firm’s total investments. 

Loop Capital analyst Alan Gould on December 20 lowered the price target on Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) to $380 from $420 and kept a Buy rating on the shares. Gould added, however, that the negative reputational issues of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) are already discounted in the stock at current levels, and he believes that the shares already trade at an “undemanding valuation”.

A total of 248 hedge funds reported owning stakes in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) in Q3 2021, worth $38.5 billion. Fisher Asset Management, one of the leading Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) stakeholders, increased its stake in the company by 54% in the third quarter. Billionaire Ken Fisher’s fund holds 7.59 million shares worth $2.57 billion. 

Here is what Canterbury Tollgate has to say about Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) in its Q3 2021 investor letter:

“To say traditional media is anti-Facebook would not be an overstatement. An already intense and multi-year critique of (or attack on) Facebook has ratcheted up in recent weeks. Facebook’s research efforts have been reported on, if often derided, for nearly a decade. Going back to 2014, Slate.com called their research practices “unethical” when FB tried to study the impact social posts had on users. Now those efforts have been turned against them for the kill shot.

My job is to observe, assess, and allocate. Not to commentate on all the whims and wishes of media narrative. However, in the case of Facebook I cannot avoid going into some detail re: the onslaught against them, which I find to be most unwarranted and insincere.

Last month the Wall Street Journal ran a five-piece series titled “The Facebook Files” which allegedly shows how toxic Instagram is for teens. The foundation of their argument was a single slide from an internal presentation claiming, based on FB’s own research, that of teens who had a negative self-image, one-third said Instagram “made them feel worse.”iii Somehow the implication here is that this is not an inescapable aspect of either the human psyche and/or society-at large, but that it is of Facebook’s doing…” (Click here to see the full text)