Meta is a hold, not a buy; short-term performance is expected to be rangebound/dead money due to financial deterioration (FCF/EPS) and legal risks.

Meta got hit hard today.

Second thing we're going to talk about in this video is Meta. Meta is a stock that is very divisive and there's not a lot of people that can really give it to you both sides. I'm here to do that here today.

As somebody that's been a meta shareholder on and off for the longest time, like pretty much since the company went IPO, I want to give you a perspective on the stock here today that I think is going to be very important and talk about the bearish points with the stock, the bullish points with the stock, and really get you to understand this company on a little deeper level.

So, if you're looking at it and you see the stock at a 500 something, you're trying to figure out is this a good deal? Is this a bad deal? What's going on here? Why is the stock not rallying?

People thought the stock was going to be good this year and it's not, right?

Massive tech companies like Amazon, Google, McDougall, Meta are borrowing heavily to build data centers and finance artificial intelligence infrastructure.

But look further. look to more quality, right? And we're going to see a very worrying trend. Look at Meta's free cash flow at this point in time, right? It topped a long time ago and is clearly trending down, right?

Free cash flow per share from Meta. Same exact thing. But I want to give you even a more real illustration because what we're focusing on here is trilling 12 month. If you look on a quarterly basis, it's really ugly.

Look at the free cash flow of Meta. Oh my gosh, do we have a problem. Oh my gosh.

additionally, it's not just free cash flow that's a problem. It's earnings per share. Right? If you look at the latest quarterly numbers for Meta when it comes to EPS on a quarter-over-quarter basis, EPS is down over 40% and a year-over-year basis, down 13%.

I mean, Meta used to be the company you could always count on coming through with bigger and bigger EPS numbers, and now we're talking about EPS going down for this company, right?

And remember, the capex numbers aren't stopping. It's not like all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, we're not spending any." No, it's going to get worse before it gets better for these companies as I've been explaining, right?

Nvidia, Apple, Mr. softy Microsoft, Amazing Zon, Google, McDougall, SpaceX, Broadcom, Meta, Tesla, Masla, Micron, and Walmart, right? Those 11 companies right there.

Meta is a capex problem.

Okay, Meta. So Meta's front page news here today. Uh you know, they got a trial going on. Okay, this trial's another messy situation for Meta.

Investor keeping a close eye on opening arguments in a Meta child privacy case that starts Tuesday. A group of 29 states have filed suit against Facebook and Instagram parent arguing that Meta violated federal child privacy act various consumer protection statutes and fostered addictive behavior in teens and children.

Attorneys for Meta said the company could be on the hook for as much as $1.4 trillion.

Oh my gosh, that's insane. The lawyers representing states told a judge last week that 200 billion is a more realistic number. No matter what, those numbers are crazy, right? Those are crazy.

Now, also, this could affect algorithm in the future and how they do their algorithm. So, it's a whole situation, right?

So, Meta, I'll put it to you like this. And keep in mind, this is a stock. The first time I ever bought Meta Stock was a few months after it went IPO, and the stock had crashed like 50%.

I bought some shares, and you know, I was kind of still in my first few years of investing at that time. And I made some quick money on Meta and I flipped out of it for like I don't know 10 20% gain or something like that.

Right. And then I started buying in very heavily around what was that 2017 2018 I think it's 2018 into 2019. Then I bought incredibly heavy in like 2022.

But you got to understand with Meta listen Meta goes through these hurricanes I call them. And if you were around back in the 2022 days when I was buying Meta stock very heavily, I was telling you guys like Meta's in a hurricane, right?

And so Meta's in another hurricane, okay? And this hurricane is it's a big one and it's not going to go away short term. And when Meta gets in these hurricane situations, it's not like they'd have just one problem.

They end up having like a multitude of problems. That's why I call it a hurricane. It' be one thing if they only had this trial and that was it. They got a bunch of problems coming from a bunch of angles now.

So, first off, we got what just happened there, right? The states are after them. They're trying to seek 1.4 trillion, 200 billion. Who knows what the number ends up being, but don't be surprised if Meta has to end up changing some algorithms.

Don't be surprised if Meta has to come out of pocket billions of dollars. Like, we'll see what happens, but it's not it's not a good situation, right? And it's not good from a branding perspective as either, right? So, that's a big issue.

But then we have capex concerns, right? They're spending silly amounts of capex and they're probably going to spend even more next year and they got a massive lawsuit they're going to have to fund as well, right?

Then it's not just that they're spending so much, it's that they're the one company that no one is sure if they're even going to get an ROI on this capex. Everybody else is like confident that you're going to get at least some return on investment.

It might not be a great one, but at least people will say, "Amazon, you're spending so much. We get it because AWS growth has taken off, right? Same thing with Google with Google Cloud and they also have a chips business as well, right?

Um, even Microsoft with their open AI investment and so those companies get a pass for their ROI and obviously obviously Microsoft also with their cloud business as well.

Meta people like I don't know like Meta's talking about maybe doing a cloud business and maybe doing this, maybe doing that, but even if they do that, we we don't even know if they're going to be successful at it.

And additionally like it's going to grow from such a small base like the numbers won't be meaningful to Meta for years because it's such a large company. So it's not like when am when AWS growth takes off it's huge for Amazon because the raw numbers are so big for for AWS, right?

Same thing with Google and their cloud business. Same thing with Azure and Microsoft's product, right? If Google if micros if meta's grown from like a base of nothing and they grow to a few billion dollars, it's nothing, you know, it's a rounding error for for for Meta over the next few years.

And so that's a big question like what what are we getting on all all this capex spend?

Then you have free cash flow is done for Meta for the next several years. Like just mathematically it's done. And then earnings per share is likely going to continue to shrink for the next few years for Meta.

So, we're in a hurricane. I don't know another way to put it. We're in an absolute hurricane. And none of this is being cleaned up in the next like few weeks, the next few months.

This is going to take a year minimum, but likely several years to clean up this mess. This hurricane is it's real. It's real regarding Meta. And I'm telling you, when it when when it hits, it's it's ugly.

It's category five. when we're talking Meta, right?

And so when I look at Meta stock, right, it's a stock that's an important position for me. It's over half million dollar position, the public count. I look at it as just a hold. I really do.

Um, it's the messiest of the mag seven outside of Tesla, but it's hard for me to get excited about Meta. I think the earnings per share is going down next year, and I think it's going down more than next year.

And so, you look at a forward P of Meta and you're like, "Oh, looks so good." I don't think it looks good. their free cash flow is likely going to get worse before it gets better.

And then we got this massive uh lawsuit situation. It's a mess, man. It's really a mess.

It's a company I want to hold for the long term. I want it to continue to be a core position, but I'm not bullish about Meta in the short term. If it runs, I I think it's a rangebound stock, and I've said this many times.

I think it's a rangebound stock. I think every, you know, nice bounce you get in the stock where it's like, oh, Meta is coming back. It just gets sold off. And I think that will continue to be the situation.

But I'm willing to hold my money in a stock that is dead money shortterm for the long-term upside there, right?

And so what you you know, what would it take me to say, "Oh gosh, I got to go add more meta shares. Woo. I need either the mess starting to get cleaned up and I can see some ending or ultimately, listen, I need the stock price a lot lower than where we're at.

I'm talking 300s, right? 300. So, that's something to keep in mind there.

2022 historic buying opportunity for Meta Stock, right? Historic buying opportunity. Like, wow. Meta stock for under $100. Incredible, right? Meta Stock, I don't look at it as a historic buying opportunity. It's way too much of a mess, right?

And um you know, if Meta goes down to 300, I'm I might feel very different about that company. You might see me starting to gobble up shares left and right, but I'm going to put my money where it has the best chance to grow. And it it has the best riskreward.