Dan Loeb's Third Point Boosts Meta Holdings, Now A Top 4 Position

Activist investor Dan Loeb‘s Third Point LLC has significantly boosted its investment in Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms, Inc. META in the fourth quarter of 2024, bringing the stock to its top four list.

According to recent 13F filings, reflecting his holding as of Dec. 31, 2024, Loeb increased his stake in Facebook’s parent company to 665,000, up from 545,000 in the third quarter of 2024, a 22% increase.

This marks a significant turnaround as the investor has earlier slashed shares by half in Meta from 1.1 million in the second quarter of 2024 to 545,000 shares in the third quarter of FY24.

Major events:

Last month, META reported fourth-quarter revenue of $48.39 billion, beating analyst estimates of $47.03 billion and, EPS of $8.02 surpassed analyst estimates of $6.77.

Meta disclosed first-quarter revenue guidance of $39.5 billion-$41.8 billion versus Benzinga Pro estimates of $41.71 billion and expects full-year 2025 expenses to be in the range of $114 billion to $119 billion.

In addition, the company agreed to a $25 million settlement with President Donald Trump over his suspension from Facebook and Instagram following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Moreover, Meta raised the quarterly cash dividend by 5% from 50 cents to 52.5 cents per share, payable on March 26, 2025, to stockholders of record as of March 14, 2025.

Analysts Views: Multiple firms raised their price forecasts on the stock following the strong results. JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth remained bullish on Meta AI's potential as it has considerable room to grow within Meta's 3.35 billion Family DAP and expects a wide range of e-commerce & services functionality to be added this year driven by Llama 4.

BofA Securities analyst Justin Post stated that while earnings momentum will stall in 2025, Meta sent an upbeat tone on an "exciting product roadmap" for Meta AI, Llama, Meta Coding agent, and Meta AI glasses and an "opportunity to deliver strong revenue growth" without any real headwind warnings.

As per a report, Meta's aggregate investment in virtual and augmented reality will likely surpass $100 billion in 2025, coinciding with CEO Mark Zuckerberg hailing 2025 as significant for its smart glasses.

However, Meta is facing intense criticism from former employees who claim its latest round of performance-based layoffs unfairly targeted high performers, including those on parental and medical leave. Last week, the company began cutting approximately 3,600 jobs, or 5% of its workforce, in what Zuckerberg described as a performance-based reduction.

Year to date, the tech behemoth has soared nearly 22%, outperforming the iShares Global Comm Services ETF, which gained about 9% over the same time frame. Also, the company has been performing strongly compared to Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, which fell roughly 3%, and Baidu, Inc. BIDU, which rose approximately 16% so far this year.

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