We recently published a list of  Top 10 AI News and Analyst Ratings You Should Not Miss. Since Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) ranks 2nd on the list, it deserves a deeper look.

Investors are on tenterhooks as Jensen Huang’s AI giant is about to release earnings. Gene Munster, Deepwater Asset Management managing partner, said in an interview with CNBC that the broader market can see a pullback if Blackwell-related delays show a wider impact on the AI chips market. The analyst predicted that it’s going to be a “difficult week” for major tech companies.

However, Munster is highly bullish on the broader AI space for the long term.

“I still think that we are in an early innings of a 3 to 5 year tech bull market that is powered by AI, and I think all these big tech companies are going to do well over the next couple of years,” Munster said.

The analyst said that Jensen Huang has indicated in the previous quarters that the demand for AI chips is more than what his company could manage in the short term, and if he reiterates this in the upcoming results, it would give a strong signal to investors about the AI potential.

“There is a lot of awareness about AI but I think the significance of what it’s gonna do is still underappreciated by the market.”

In this article, we compiled the most important latest AI news and analyst ratings around major AI tech stocks. With each company we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 219

Mark Mahaney, Evercore ISI head of internet research, recently talked about how Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) was able to spur revenue growth because of AI during a program on CNBC.

“If you look at what happened with Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META). they went to almost 30% revenue growth, they are growing dollar-wise faster than anybody else that’s because they used AI to rebuild their ad-tech stack because they used AI to rebuild their user interface and get us more engaged, so it actually worked for them.”

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) crushed past analyst estimates for its latest quarterly results, giving signs that the huge AI spending it’s doing would bear more results in the future. After the results, Citi said it remains “incrementally positive” on Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) shares due to engagement and monetization gains, along with expanding margins. The firm raised its price target for META to $580 from $550.

JPMorgan said it sees AI benefiting Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) at three levels: core Family of Apps (FoA) improvements, new opportunities and experiences, and scaling the Metaverse. It also upped META price target to $610 from $480.

Morgan Stanley also liked how Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) is improving its recommendation systems and quality with AI.

The market has been reluctant about Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) massive spending on AI. What does Meta want to achieve with its AI spending? The company wants to use AI to improve engagement and language models like Llama 3 to improve user interactions, boost engagement, and better monetize its 3.2 billion daily active users.

But can Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) sustain this high spending? The company’s free cash flow margin is around 30%, and it’s well on track to report $50 billion in free cash flow this year. Based on this target the stock is trading at around 26 times this year’s free cash flow. Given the current trajectory continues Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) can post $58 billion in free cash flow by next year, which means the stock is trading at 21 times next year’s free cash flow. With a whopping $35 billion in net cash, a strong user base, and a key position in the consumer-facing side of the AI industry, Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) could be a solid long-term investment.

Polen Focus Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:

“In the second quarter, the top relative contributors to the Portfolio’s performance were all names we do not hold: Home Depot, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), and AbbVie. Meta Platforms delivered robust results in the period, with revenue growth accelerating in the first quarter. However, revenue comparisons for Meta will become more difficult from here, and its guidance for 2Q revenue fell below market expectations. After the company’s “year of efficiency,” where it cut costs in its core business, management is now indicating another ramp-up in GenAI and metaverse spending, spurring concerns about future profit margins. Metaverse spending, by our calculations, is now over $20 billion per year with little to no expected return on the foreseeable horizon.”

Overall, Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) ranks 2nd on Insider Monkey’s list titled Top 10 AI News and Analyst Ratings You Should Not Miss. While we acknowledge the potential of META, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than META but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.