Meta’s Wobble: A Pinch of Trouble, A Heap of Promise

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Now, listen closely. This Meta Platforms – a rather enormous beast of a company, you see – has been having a bit of a wobble. A proper shiver, really. The share price, as of late 2026, is down about 8.5% for the year. A nasty tumble, wouldn’t you say? Especially when you remember the frightful spending spree they’ve been on. Investors, those easily spooked creatures, got the jitters towards the end of 2025. A perfectly understandable reaction, if you ask me. Since October 29th, the shares have slid about a fifth. A fifth! It’s enough to make a grown man weep into his porridge.

So, the question is this: is this a moment for sensible folk to cautiously dip a toe into the water, or a warning sign to run for the hills? Let’s have a proper look, shall we?

Meta Platforms: A Curious Case of Growth

It’s terribly difficult to find fault with Meta’s recent performance, you see. They own Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and a new contraption called Meta AI. A whole menagerie of digital beasts! And not only are they growing, but they’re growing faster. It’s quite alarming, really. Even more astonishing, their investments in this ‘AI’ – a sort of electronic brain, if you will – are already paying off. A clever trick, if I may say so.

Their revenue in the third quarter rose a whopping 26% compared to last year, accelerating from 22% in the second. And a great deal of this growth comes from this AI business. The bosses say their advertising success is largely due to improvements in this ‘AI ranking system’ – a complicated sort of sorting machine. Mark Zuckerberg, the head honcho, boasted that the annual revenue from these AI-powered advertising tools has surpassed $60 billion. A truly monstrous sum! And this AI assistant, Meta AI, is causing quite a stir. It’s used across all their social media platforms and even has its own app. It already has over a billion monthly users. A billion! Imagine the data they’re collecting. Gives you the shivers, doesn’t it?

But the best news? Meta remains frightfully profitable. Their income from operations rose 18% to $20.5 billion in the third quarter. And they generated nearly $11 billion in free cash flow in just one quarter. Enough to build a small country, I daresay.

To top it all off, Meta trades at a rather conservative valuation of 27 times earnings. A reasonable price, wouldn’t you agree? And it looks even cheaper when you consider the forward price-to-earnings ratio, which looks at future earnings. Meta’s forward ratio is just 21. A bargain, practically!

And they’re predicting a strong holiday quarter, too. They expect revenue between $56 billion and $59 billion. Compared to about $48 billion last year. A rather handsome increase, wouldn’t you say?

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Time to Snatch Up Meta Shares?

All in all, this looks like a good time to buy shares of this tech behemoth. Not only is Meta showing real progress with this AI business, but its valuation is rather attractive. A sensible investment, I believe.

Of course, there are risks. The main one is their aggressive spending plans. Driven by their insatiable appetite for ‘AI compute’ – whatever that is – their capital expenditures have been soaring. They’re now forecasting spending between $70 billion and $72 billion for the year, and over $100 billion in 2026. If Meta doesn’t get the return it expects from these expenditures, this spending could weigh heavily on profitability. A rather gloomy prospect, wouldn’t you say?

However, I believe Meta’s conservative valuation, in relation to its robust business momentum, does a good job of pricing in these risks. For this reason, I think buying shares on the dip makes perfect sense. A little bit of a gamble, perhaps, but a calculated one. And a sensible investor always appreciates a calculated gamble, don’t you think?

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2026-01-21 16:22