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Meta Platforms

META on Nasdaq. Meta sells apps, virtual reality headsets, and glasses to people and advertisers. Market value $1.6tn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

Should I look at this?

Good business, but not cheap right now

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

See cheaper Media & telecom stocks on the list

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
2.1%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $2.15 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
22.8×full

You pay 22.8 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
28.3%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 28 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 100 of 100. Price score: 45 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$741.90 a share, 43% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $520.26 to $779.82.

Dividend: 0.3% a year

Paid every year for 2 years

Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

39.0
19.3
44.1
54.1
46.1
41.0
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26
Revenue
$117.9bn$116.6bn$134.9bn$164.5bn$201.0bn
Operating margin
39.6%24.8%34.7%42.2%41.4%
Debt to equity
0.000.080.120.160.28
Shares outstanding
2.86bn2.70bn2.63bn2.61bn2.57bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)5 of 8 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)No
  • Debt0.28× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 18.5% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesYes, 10% fewer since 2021

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $60.8 billion last quarter, up 28% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $15.8 billion, down 14% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 38 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, down from 44 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $41 billion, down from $50.1 billion.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
  • Debt is $68.2 billion more than cash, up from $16.8 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$40.6bn
December 2024$48.4bn
March 2025$42.3bn
June 2025$47.5bn
September 2025$51.2bn
December 2025$59.9bn
March 2026$56.3bn
June 2026$60.8bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$15.7bn
December 2024$20.8bn
March 2025$16.6bn
June 2025$18.3bn
September 2025$2.7bn
December 2025$22.8bn
March 2026$26.8bn
June 2026$15.8bn

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
28 October 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
29 January 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
29 October 2026

Who owns it

50 long-term investors we follow own it, up from 49 last quarter. 5,057 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26

Sold out this quarter

Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

2 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 11 sold $260m, $247m of it under preset trading plans.

  • Olivan Javier
    Chief Operating Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    28 September 2026
    Shares
    1,575
    Price
    $749.82
    Value
    $1m
  • Zuckerberg Mark
    COB and CEO, Director
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    24 September 2026
    Shares
    27,474
    Price
    $777.44
    Value
    $21m
  • Cox Christopher K
    Chief Product Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    21 September 2026
    Shares
    40,000
    Price
    $712.76
    Value
    $29m
  • Olivan Javier
    Chief Operating Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    21 September 2026
    Shares
    1,575
    Price
    $680.27
    Value
    $1m
  • Cox Christopher K
    Chief Product Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    15 September 2026
    Shares
    20,000
    Price
    $675.23
    Value
    $14m
  • Olivan Javier
    Chief Operating Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    14 September 2026
    Shares
    1,575
    Price
    $657.73
    Value
    $1m
  • Cox Christopher K
    Chief Product Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    9 September 2026
    Shares
    20,000
    Price
    $650.28
    Value
    $13m
  • Olivan Javier
    Chief Operating Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    8 September 2026
    Shares
    5,354
    Price
    $616.58
    Value
    $3m
  • Anderson Aaron
    Chief Accounting Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    3 September 2026
    Shares
    3,240
    Price
    $618.06
    Value
    $2m
  • Mahoney Curtis J.
    Chief Legal Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    18 August 2026
    Shares
    1,559
    Price
    $558.00
    Value
    $869,922

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 29 Jan 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 30 Jul 2026 and 5 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.