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Here's How Much a $1000 Investment in Meta Platforms Made 10 Years Ago Would Be Worth Today

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How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.

Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to META for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Meta Platforms' Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Meta Platforms' main business drivers.

Meta Platforms is the world’s largest social media platform. The company’s portfolio offering evolved from a single Facebook app to multiple apps like photo and video sharing app Instagram and WhatsApp messaging app owing to acquisitions. Along with in-house developed Messenger, these apps now form Meta’s family of products used by almost 3.74 billion people on a monthly basis as of Dec 31, 2022.

Meta uses metrics like daily active users (DAUs) and monthly active users (MAUs) to measure Facebook’s user base. As of Dec 31, 2022, DAUs and MAUs were 2 billion and 2.96 billion, respectively. Newly introduced metric, which is the family daily active people (DAP) that measures daily users of its family of products, was 2.96 billion.  

Headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, Meta generated revenues worth $116.61 billion in 2022. Advertisement accounted for 97.5% of revenues. Marketers buy ads that can appear on multiple platforms including Meta, Instagram, Messenger and third-party applications and websites.

Meta, thanks to its huge user base gained a significant market share in the advertising space wherein it faces tough competition from Google, Twitter, Amazon and Snapchat-parent Snap.

Meta also faces significant competition from the likes of Apple (messaging), YouTube (advertising and video), Bytedance (social media) and Tencent (messaging and social media).

Meta core app enables people to connect, share, discover and communicate with one other on mobile devices and personal computers. User engagement on core Meta platform is fostered by News Feed that displays an algorithmically-ranked series of stories and advertisements customized for each user.

Instagram is a community for sharing photos, videos and messages, enabling people to discover interests that they care about. People can express themselves through photos, videos and private messaging via Instagram Feed and Stories.

Messenger helps people to connect with friends, family, groups and businesses across platforms and devices. WhatsApp is a simple, reliable and secure messaging application, used by people and businesses around the world to communicate in a private way.

Meta also offers virtual reality (VR) products through its Oculus division.

Bottom Line

Putting together a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of research, patience, and a little bit of risk. For Meta Platforms, if you bought shares a decade ago, you're likely feeling really good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in February 2013 would be worth $6,341.32, or a gain of 534.13%, as of February 24, 2023, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.

The S&P 500 rose 164.73% and the price of gold increased 10.85% over the same time frame in comparison.

Going forward, analysts are expecting more upside for META.

Meta is suffering from challenging macroeconomic conditions that is negatively impacting its advertising revenues. Unfavorable forex, targeting and measurement headwinds due to Apple’s iOS changes, normalization of e-commerce after the pandemic peak and higher inflation hurt growth in the reported quarter. User base in Europe declined in the reported quarter. Meta’s first-quarter guidance reflects macroeconomic and forex concerns. Weak advertising demand is a headwind. Meta expects Reels to monetize much slower than feed or stories. However, Meta is benefiting from steady user growth across all regions, particularly Asia Pacific. Increased engagement for its products like Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook has been a major growth driver. Shares have outperformed the industry in the past year.

Shares have gained 16.80% over the past four weeks and there have been 13 higher earnings estimate revisions for fiscal 2023 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.

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