5 Worst-Performing S&P 500 Stocks in 2022

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

Year to Date Return as of September 16: -56.91%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 184

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is crashing in 2022. Shares of the social media giant have fallen 56.91% year to date as of September 16. On September 13, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak estimated that the total time spent on Meta’s social media platforms in the U.S. declined 3% year-over-year in August. The analyst reiterated his Overweight rating and $225 price target on the stock.

This September, Piper Sandler analyst Thomas Champion slashed his price target on Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) to $175 from $190 and maintained a Neutral rating on the stock.

At the end of the second quarter of 2022, 184 hedge funds were bullish on Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) and held stakes worth $18 billion in the company. This is compared to 200 hedge funds in Q1 2022, with stakes worth $19.3 billion.

As of June 30, Fisher Asset Management owns more than 11.5 million shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) and is the leading investor in the company. The fund’s stakes are valued at $1.86 billion.

Here is what Saga Partners had to say about Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) in its second-quarter 2022 investor letter:

“Meta (formerly known as Facebook, when I discuss the social media apps specifically, I’ll still refer to Facebook). The Portfolio first bought Meta in Q4’18. It was a controversial investment then and has continued to be to this day. The core mission of the company has been to make the world more open and connected. To do that, it needs to connect everyone in the world, which it largely has done with its nearly 3 billion monthly active users across its family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp). That type of scale is hard to grasp and is getting pretty close to essentially every smartphone user outside of China and Russia.

From an investing perspective, there are questions surrounding Apple’s iOS App Tracking Transparency (ATT) changes that limit sharing user data across apps, investments in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) i.e. the metaverse, and competitive threats surrounding the rise of TikTok. It seems like only yesterday (or last year) that one of the major risks of Facebook was that the company was too powerful, had too much influence on public opinion, and faced antitrust and regulatory concerns…” (Click here to see the full text)