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Robust Q4 Results Drove Meta Platforms (META) Up 37.3% in Q1

Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund increased 12.6% (Institutional Shares) in the first quarter compared to an 11.4% gain for the Russell 1000 Growth Index and a 10.6% increase for the S&P 500 Index. Despite higher interest rates, the US economy continues to surpass expectations. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.

Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund highlighted stocks like Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is a technology company that develops products to connect people. The one-month return of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was 10.54%, and its shares gained 82.50% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On May 24, 2024, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stock closed at $430.16 per share with a market capitalization of $3.197 trillion.

Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund stated the following regarding Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:

“Shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), the world’s largest social network, rose 37.3% in the quarter due to robust fourth quarter top-line growth of 25% year-over-year with operating margins more than doubling year-over-year to 41%, benefiting from the year of efficiency12 as Meta’s headcount was down 22% year-over-year (note that the profitability of the core business is even stronger as Reality Labs’ losses of over $4.5 billion in the quarter are included in the overall operating income metric). Meta also guided for first-quarter revenue growth of approximately 29% year-over-year, which was better than expected. Advertiser satisfaction and adoption of Meta remains strong, core app engagement is healthy with video daily watch time up 25% year-over-year and the total number of monthly active users up 6% year-on-year to 3.98 billion in the fourth quarter, and Instagram Reels and click-to-message ads monetization continues to improve. Meta also continues to rapidly innovate in GenAI, with its leading research lab releasing widely adopted open-source models (e.g., Llama 2), and internal algorithms and core apps becoming augmented with AI (e.g., Meta’s recommendation engine). We remain shareholders and believe Meta can sustain its leading market share in digital advertising thanks to strong network effects enabled by its massive user and advertiser base. Additionally, we believe the company’s innovative culture, large installed base, and leading GenAI research should enable it to embed AI and GenAI into its offerings with further monetization opportunities ahead. For example, AI agents could help scale business messaging, handling a large volume of customer requests on behalf of business customers, making business messaging at scale more viable.”

Meta Platforms, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:META) trailing 12 months revenue is $142.71 billion and its year over year quarterly revenue growth rate is 27.30% and earnings growth rate is 116.70%.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is in third position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 246 hedge fund portfolios held Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) at the end of the first quarter which was 242 in the previous quarter.

In another article, we discussed Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) and shared the list of best AI stocks to buy for 2024 according to billionaire David Tepper. Artisan Value Fund commented about Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as Microsoft but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: Michael Burry Is Selling These Stocks and A New Dawn Is Coming to US Stocks.

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

The $250 Trillion AI Hype is Real. A few years from now, you’ll probably wish you’d bought this stock.

Dr. Inan Dogan

Dr. Ian Dogan

Co-Founder and Research Director at Insider Monkey

When Jeff Bezos said that one breakthrough technology would shape Amazon’s destiny, even Wall Street’s biggest analysts were caught off guard.

Fast forward a year and Amazon’s new CEO Andy Jassy described generative AI as a “once-in-a-lifetime” technology that is already being used across Amazon to reinvent customer experiences.

At the 8th Future Investment Initiative conference, Elon Musk predicted that by 2040 there would be at least 10 billion humanoid robots, with each priced between $20,000 and $25,000.

Do the math. According to Musk, this technology could be worth $250 trillion by 2040.

Put another way, that’s roughly equal to:

  • 175 Teslas
  • 107 Amazons
  • 140 Metas
  • 84 Googles
  • 65 Microsofts
  • And 55 Nvidias

And here’s the wild part — this $250 trillion wave isn’t tied to one company, but to an entire ecosystem of AI innovators set to reshape the global economy.

It’s a leap so massive, it could reshape how businesses, governments, and consumers operate worldwide.

Even if that $250 trillion figure sounds ambitious, major firms like PwC and McKinsey still see AI unlocking multi-trillion-dollar potential.

How could anything be worth that much?

The answer lies in a breakthrough so powerful it’s redefining how humanity works, learns, and creates.

And this breakthrough has already set off a frenzy among hedge funds and Wall Street’s top investors.

What most investors don’t realize is that one under-owned company holds the key to this $250 trillion revolution.

In fact, Verge argues this company’s supercheap AI technology should concern rivals.

Before I reveal the details, let’s talk about how some of the richest people on the planet are positioning themselves.

  • Bill Gates sees artificial intelligence as the “biggest technological advance in my lifetime,” more transformative than the internet or personal computer, capable of improving healthcare, education, and addressing climate change.
  • Larry Ellison — through Oracle, is spending billions on Nvidia chips and partnering with Cohere to embed generative AI across Oracle’s cloud and apps.
  • Warren Buffett — not known for tech hype — says this breakthrough could have a ‘hugely beneficial social impact.

When billionaires from Silicon Valley to Wall Street line up behind the same idea — you know it’s worth paying attention to.

Even as we admire what Tesla, Nvidia, Alphabet, and Microsoft have built, we believe an even greater opportunity lies elsewhere…

But the real story isn’t Nvidia — it’s a much smaller company quietly improving the critical technology that makes this entire revolution possible.

And judging by what I’m hearing from both Silicon Valley insiders and Wall Street veterans…

This prediction might not be bold at all:

A few years from now, you’ll wish you’d owned this stock.

The best part? You can discover everything about this company and its groundbreaking technology right now.

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Wall Street calls this $3 stock a “Melting Ice Cube.” They said the same thing about BTI before it returned 90%.

Dr. Inan Dogan

Dr. Ian Dogan

Co-Founder and Research Director at Insider Monkey

My name is Inan Dogan. I’m the co-founder and Research Director of Insider Monkey. I have an important message for you today.

Since March 2017, my stock picks have returned 16.5% annually. Today, I’ve found an opportunity even bigger than my British American Tobacco call.

Two years ago, Wall Street wrote off British American Tobacco (BTI) as a “melting ice cube.” The stock had crashed 40% from its peak, and consensus said the business was dying.

We looked under the cover and realized they were wrong.

We alerted our subscribers, and BTI returned 90% in just 16 months.

Now if you had invested just $10,000 in BTI in June 2024, you’d be sitting on $19,000 in October 2025.

Today, we have identified a nearly identical pattern in a digital-first giant trading at $3.

While the market panics over a surface-level revenue decline, our PhD-led research shows management has actually surgically cut $100 million in waste to focus on high-margin growth.

This pattern is a hallmark of our 16.5% annual return track record. The current opportunity offers a 400% upside potential—dwarfing even our 90% BTI return.

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