Meta is a strong long-term buy due to accelerating ad growth and AI monetization, outweighing concerns about high CapEx and low free cash flow.

I just bought $25,000 worth of meta stock. I believe it's going to be one of the best stocks to buy now for the long term.

27% off the high on a 28% grower. 52-week range 520 to 790. What a range for Meta. 52-week low 520. My entry five, roughly 580. And then the high was 791. Street target 755. If we go with the street target, we are looking at a huge $175 move to the north, to the right side.

One of the reasons I like is one of the best stocks to buy now, Meta Platforms stock just looks like there's all kinds of opportunity. We are buying close to that low, off the high by a monster amount, 27% off the lows just slightly. And that's where you want to go.

Now, why Wall Street dumped it. Whoa, what happened? EPS, earnings per share, a huge miss. 6.18 versus the 7.14. That's what was expected. It didn't happen. And of course, 13% short fell fall.

Operating margin fell to 31% from 43% a year ago. That's concerning. And then the stock reflects that. It goes from 700 something all the way down to five, almost 400s.

CapEx raised again. Remember, Wall Street is punishing everybody who is reporting massive increases in CapEx. They are one of those. Low end jumped 10 billion in one quarter, nearly double the 72.2 billion spent in 2025.

That starts to add to 130 billion to 145 billion.

Free cash flow, check this out. Look at this. Quarterly free cash flow, 8.5 billion down to .8 billion. You cannot have free cash flow going negative for these companies for a long before the the market starts to punish them.

They'll let them burn a little bit, but if it gets to a point that they got to start issuing stock, raising money, whatever, that's when things get scary. Down from 8.5 billion a year ago, CapEx of 31.1 billion, eight almost all of the operating cash flow of 31.9 billion, hardly anything left.

That is why when you see this happening out there and you're trying to find your best stocks to buy now and you know, I like Meta. I think Meta is one of the ones and you see the punishing from the CapEx spending.

You see the free cash flow. It's not like that free cash flow can't come back. It is the spending that they're doing on AI and all this good stuff and as that turns into increased revenue moving forward, hopefully, that is when the CapEx hopefully can kind of come down as they build out what they're building out and then we can see this thing absolutely go to the next level. And that's where we're at.

The miss was one-time charges. Let's talk about a strip them out in the quarter beat. So for those who did not look under the hood, pull the curtain back to see why Meta got punished as bad as it did, they had 2.4 billion legal charges that they booked in Q2.

1.18 billion is severance for about 8,000 roles. That's in that whole getting that getting the company in shape, tightening the belt. Operating income growth excluding these charges, they actually went up 9%.

So if you take out the one-time hits, it's not bad. It's actually pretty good.

Revenue beat 60.8 billion versus 60.2 billion. The revenue continues to grow for Meta. Up 28% year-over-year, ad revenue 59.4 billion up 27%. You don't hear me saying they're dropping.

You don't hear me saying everything's going red. You hear me telling you that meta continues to increase what needs to be increased. And that, when I'm looking for one of the stocks to add into my long-term holdings, is what I search for.

I want a company that got hit. They got They're on sale. The price seems too good to be true. Uh you know, and then we hit a bottom and we start to come back up. I want to see that strength buying in at all levels cuz it kind of tells me that's the floor. And And that's where we start to talk about it.

Head count Head count down 3% from Q1, over 75,000 employees leaner going into the AI build-out. Like I said, they had to do some severance, and as they continue to get this company under, you know, down to what size they believe it could be, we know that that's going to lead to better numbers in the future.

And with the AI the AI build-out, you have to understand AI is going to take jobs. No doubt about it. I can tell you firsthand that AI allows uh users that know what they're looking for, know how to use it, they get trained on it.

You can build out massive amounts of teams on if your your business utilizes the online stuff very easily. And sadly, that means a lot of people are going to lose their jobs if AI can replace it, it is not if, but when AI will replace it.

And that's the scary part. Now, the good news for investors, if you think about Facebook, it's a it's an online, it's a digital company. The ads, all that stuff. That it means a lot of positions can be replaced, and they're already starting to do it.

I don't expect it to happen in in days, weeks, but over the next few months, quarters, and years, yeah, absolutely. It becomes more and leaner as AI they get it up and running, they get it designed, they get it done, and AI can work 24/7, never stop, never take a breath, keep working, and that's what I I see happening.

So, I believe Meta is going to be one of these companies that fully utilizes the AI structure build out for both their their own squad and use in bettering their own products and services. So, I I think that's what you're going to see.

Reported operating income What do we got? 18.8 billion, look down 8%. That is the charges. The business underneath grew. So, if you take this right here and we put it everything in like I talked, we are a good thing.

The ad machine is accelerating. Anybody who knows anything about ads, man, Facebook is numero uno. That is the place to go when you were looking at ads. Check out these numbers.

The ad machine is accelerating. Over the last year, Q2 versus Q2, 25 versus 26, we got right here. Um price per ad was up 12%. The ads are becoming more expensive. Ad impressions up 14%.

Not only are they more expensive per ad, they're getting more ad impressions. Ad revenue 27%. We know that's the main thing. And revenue 28% up year over year for the ad revenue.

They continue to make money. Q2 revenue 60.8 billion up 28% year over year. Both levers at once, more ads shown and each ad worth more. That's what you want if you're buying a company that deals with this. That is pricing power, not just volume.

People know that Facebook is the place to go. Have you ever bought anything off of Facebook? Yes or no? And it's because it's so you were on there, we see it, you know, you got the little things on there, and then you see an ad and like, man, how does it know that's what I want?

Because it is so good with the AI and everything it's going to be doing that it knows what we want before we even know what we want. And then we see it and we're like, we want it.

Let me know in the comments down below what you bought last. I bought a shirt. It was a shirt on something I I don't know how it knew. Must have had the cookies or something, but it was something I was interested in and I bought a shirt.

Uh Meta 28% beat Alphabet, aka Google, 24% revenue growth. Both are growing though. Both are growing in the same quarter. So, obviously, Meta, aka Facebook, one of the reasons I see it as one of the best stocks to buy now crushed it.

3.6 billion people every day. Listen to what I just said. 3.6 billion people every day. Daily active people across the family of apps that they have. All of it. You do not have to look at Meta Platforms as just just Facebook.

This thing is massive. They got Facebook, Instagram, What's Apps, WhatsApp's, WhatsApp, and Threads. We got a ton. We crossed 500 million monthly. I say we cuz I own this thing with 25K and looking to get more. 30 million messages per second at the World Cup final peak on WhatsApp. 30 million per second.

And then of course Instagram 2 billion daily actives. Make sure you're following me on Instagram. Oh my goodness, I'm putting out videos every day now. More than 2 billion actives on Facebook.

Over half of the It's just unbelievable. Less than half. I want you to read this. Half of recommended Instagram feed content, and that's 2 billion daily actives, is now less than a day old.

That's how so content they're getting. The AI ranking is getting faster and the time spent follows it. It is insane.

The AI spend is already paying. It's already making money. 75 billion Advantage Plus annual revenue run rate. It's just massive. Small businesses UA using AI and creative tools 9 million businesses using AI agents with customers weekly one plus 1 million plus and it's only going to grow.

It's only going to grow. 8.3% more clicks, 15.7% more conversions.

AI is changing everything. Anybody who says AI is just a waste, it's not going to work. AI's going to give people regular Moes and Joes and Janes a chance to become financially free.

It's those who take the time to use it to grow their little businesses into massive businesses. We can do this, but that's for those who are working like I am on my own business.

But if you're investing like I am as well with the income we get from either working at a career or side hustles, this is a kind of company I like and why I dropped 25k into it.

I don't know if you agree with me or not, that is up to you. But what do you think so far?

We have uh lift on Facebook ads from the new AI models. Better ads means advertisers pay more per ad. If AI can help us create better ads on Facebook, which Facebook is doing, you are willing to pay more because the conversion rate is better.

And we are willing to pay more as business people if it converts and it gives us a positive ROI. 60% daily plus 60% daily meta AI interactions. It continues to grow out. Uh after rebuilding the assistant on the Muse Spark model distribution to 3.6 billion people. That's a B, man. That's a lot of people.

Uh yeah, the CapEx buys the models. The models lift the ads, the ads are 90% 97% of the revenue. It's still It's the loop. So, they got to spend money on this AI. It increases everything as I'm telling you.

So, when you see the CapEx going up, understand it will lead to better things.

Compute is in demand at a premium. Sadly, I I keep telling you this, the compute is expensive. 2025 actual 72 billion on CapEx, 130 billion was the low end, the high end is 145 billion dollars.

Zuckerberg getting offers for computer at a significant premium to what Meta paid, higher margin selling intelligence than selling raw compute.

14 billion El Paso site 80% block BlackRock funded. Massive Massive 80% BlackRock funded. 1 gigawatt site structured to keep most of the cost off Meta's own balance sheet. 90.3 billion cash and securities against the 83.7 billion of debt. So, good things happening.

All right, let's go ahead and let's talk about this. 17.7 forward earnings for 28% growth. I'm showing you they had the potential to expand rapidly, bring in costs if they had to.

Depends on how they want to do it, but right now they're in the ingress the aggressive growth stage. 21.6 X on the trailing PE, that's over the last 12 months. Going forward, it's down to 17.7.

Anything at 15 or below I consider a freaking value stock, but this stock has a chance to do something magical. 1.47 trillion market cap, down about 21% over the past year. Remember, we have opportunity for this stock.

Now, 62 analysts, zero sells, all they have some bull cases. My entry 580. Here you go, you can pick your poison, but this is where they got it. I am down here at the lows. I feel good, 30% upside.

We'll see where we're going to go. You guys can let me know. Targets are opinions, not promises, but this is where the street sees it going.

What could go wrong? Let's make sure free cash flow near zero is never good. We need to keep that money flowing. No 2027 CapEx guidance cuz they know they're going to get punished if they say too much.

Q3 guide below the street. Reality Labs keeps burning burning up cash, we know that. Litigation overhang and margin reset. So, we got a lot to consider as we go forward. I want you guys to realize that.

Litigation overhang and margin reset. My plan from here, let's just make sure I add 25K more if we hit a 52150 double bottom holds into earnings. Q3 lands inside the 61 to 64 bill, that tells me we are where we want to be.

Ad growth stays above 20% per year over year. I cut in half if we if we lose 52150. We lose that, I'm cutting in half if not all out. I don't know, but at least half. Free cash flows print negative.

If we start burning money and we're not making it, that's bad. Uh I exit if 2027 CapEx guided above 170 billion. That means they're just they're going off the the deep end with spending.

Ad growth falls below 15% a second consecutive EPS miss on core cost, not good.

We got earnings October 28th to November 2nd, not sure what day, they didn't tell us.