Tech trailblazer and social media pioneer Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) has been in quite a stable uptrend over the course of 2024.
Meta stock started the year off trading at approximately $346 — at press time, a single META share was worth $636.26, amounting to an 82.87% surge on a year-to-date (YTD) timeframe. This mark also represents the stock’s all-time high (ATH) price.
Results like these, impressive as they are, aren’t surprising in a wider bull market — particularly when you take into account that the business has had five consecutive quarters that saw double beats — in simpler terms, Meta has been outperforming analyst estimates quite sustainably.
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This robust financial performance was driven by two primary factors — one is the company’s strategic investment in artificial intelligence (AI), which seems to be paying off despite the scale of the capital expenditures in question. The second is the company’s ‘year of efficiency’ plan dating back to 2023 — a cost management initiative that has seen widespread layoffs both on the ground level and in management.
The plan has certainly borne fruit — Meta’s operating margins are at 43% per the company’s latest earnings call, covering Q3 2024, released on October 30.
However, in the midst of all of this success, there is a worrying undercurrent — key insiders, most notably CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, have been engaging in a lot of insider selling. Over the last week, Zuckerberg seems to have intensified his profit-taking strategy — executing 4 massive transactions in a matter of days.
Mark Zuckerberg sells $67 million in Meta stock
From December 9 to December 11, Mark Zuckerberg executed a total of four transactions, worth a combined total of approximately $67,064,685, as revealed by recent SEC filings.
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The CEO first executed two smaller sales on December 9, at an average price of $614.36 per Meta share. The first of these saw the sale of 22,946 units of Meta stock, while the second was slightly smaller, encompassing 12,975 Meta shares.
Then, a day later, he followed up with the sale of 35,921 shares at an average price of $619.41 apiece — and finished his selling spree on December 11, with another 35,921 share trade. In total, Zuckerberg sold off 107,763 units of Meta stock.
While trades of this magnitude generally represent a strong bearish signal, all of the tech pioneer’s trades were prescheduled and executed in accordance with a 10b5-1 trading plan adopted back on August 9.
Despite the sale, there has been no apparent change to Meta’s long-term growth prospects — since November 20, equity researchers from 4 of Wall Street’s premier firms have revised their price targets for Meta stocks — and the outlook is wholly bullish.
Featured image via Shutterstock
