Fundamentals snapshot
META · NMS · Communication Services · Internet Content & Information
Current price
$593.00
52-week range
$520.26 - $796.25
Market cap
$1.51T
One-glance verdict
Fair-value range $369.53 – $807.02 (cautious → optimistic — tap the ? for the math)
Wall Street consensus: $828.80 (50.9% higher than our fair-value estimate)
Buy below $439.33 for a 20% safety cushion
Balance sheet
Net debt $5.59B. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
Quick scan of the biggest positives and negatives from the detailed checklist below.
What this company does
Meta owns the massive social media apps you use daily, like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and makes the vast majority of its money selling highly targeted ads to businesses on those platforms. The company is now investing billions to build the "metaverse" with its VR headsets and AI glasses, betting that this will be the next major way people interact with technology.
Meta started in 2004 as 'TheFacebook,' a website for Harvard students created by Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates. It quickly expanded to other universities and then to the public, becoming a global social media giant. Key turning points include its initial public offering (IPO), which is when a private company first sells shares of stock to the public, in 2012, and major acquisitions like Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. In 2021, the company changed its name from Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms, Inc. to signal its focus on building the 'metaverse,' a future version of the internet combining virtual and augmented reality.
Meta builds technologies that help people connect with friends, family, and communities. You probably know its main products: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, which are used by billions of people worldwide for social networking and messaging. The company also makes virtual reality (VR) headsets called Meta Quest and smart glasses, and is investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) to power features across its apps and future devices. Most of its money comes from selling ads to businesses that want to reach the vast audience using its free social media apps.
This is Meta's core and by far its largest business, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads. This segment makes money primarily by selling advertising to over 200 million businesses that want to show their products and services to the billions of people using these apps. When you see a sponsored post or ad in your Instagram feed or on Facebook, that's an advertiser paying Meta. This part of the company generates the vast majority of Meta's revenue (the total amount of money generated from sales) and all of its profits.
This is Meta's forward-looking bet on the future of computing, often called the metaverse. This segment develops and sells virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware like the Meta Quest headsets and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, along with the software and content that runs on them. The goal is to create immersive digital experiences where people can play, work, and socialize. Currently, this is a small slice of the company's revenue and operates at a significant loss, meaning it spends much more on research and development than it earns from sales.
Management is making two huge bets on the future: artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse. They are aggressively investing in AI to improve content recommendations and engagement on their apps, which makes their advertising more effective for businesses. The company is also pouring billions into its Reality Labs division to build the next computing platform, believing that virtual and augmented reality will eventually become how we interact with the digital world. This dual strategy aims to maximize profits from the current social media business to fund the creation of the next generation of technology.
Price history
Earnings history
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
Is it cheap or expensive?
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $828.80 (50.9% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Buy below $439.33 for a 20% safety cushion. That means buying at least 20% below our fair value, as a buffer in case our estimate turns out too rosy.
Our most-likely fair value is $549.16 a share — about 7.4% away from today's price of $593.00, so the stock currently looks fairly priced.
Is it drowning in debt?
Net debt $5.6B. Interest coverage 71.5x.
Meta Platforms, Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 71.5 times over. which is stronger than most peers shown here.
Total debt $86.77B Interest coverage 71.48x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $95.88B Interest coverage 175.32x +145% vs META Carries about 2.5x more debt cushion than META.
Total debt $235.54B Interest coverage 35.17x -51% vs META Carries about 2.0x less debt cushion than META.
Total debt $125.43B Interest coverage 53.89x -25% vs META Carries about 1.3x less debt cushion than META.
Total debt $84.71B Interest coverage 33.83x -53% vs META Carries about 2.1x less debt cushion than META.
Total debt $12.81B Interest coverage 503.42x +604% vs META Carries about 7.0x more debt cushion than META.
What you should know
The numbers
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
Profitability
Health
Growth
Cash flow
Dividend
Metric explainer
Debt comparison
What you should know