Meta Platforms, Inc. $META Shares Sold by Pitcairn Co.

Key Points

• Pitcairn Co. cut its stake in Meta by 17.1% in Q3, selling 5,193 shares and ending the period with 25,196 shares worth about $18.5 million, roughly 1.5% of its portfolio (its 13th largest holding).
• Insiders have been net sellers: COO Javier Oliván sold 926 shares and CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 8,089 shares, with insiders offloading 159,891 shares (~$102.5M) over the past 90 days while still owning 13.61% of the stock.
• Analyst sentiment is positive overall—MarketBeat shows a consensus "Moderate Buy" with an average price target of $844.44 after several firms raised targets, although Zacks recently downgraded the stock to "Hold."

Pitcairn Co. cut its stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META - Free Report) by 17.1% in the third quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 25,196 shares of the social networking company's stock after selling 5,193 shares during the quarter. Meta Platforms makes up approximately 1.5% of Pitcairn Co.'s investment portfolio, making the stock its 13th largest position. Pitcairn Co.'s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $18,503,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the stock. Westchester Capital Management Inc. acquired a new stake in Meta Platforms during the third quarter valued at $26,000. Bare Financial Services Inc purchased a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms during the 2nd quarter worth about $30,000. Knuff & Co LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms during the 2nd quarter valued at about $44,000. Spurstone Advisory Services LLC purchased a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 2nd quarter valued at about $59,000. Finally, Evergreen Private Wealth LLC increased its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 64.8% in the 3rd quarter. Evergreen Private Wealth LLC now owns 89 shares of the social networking company's stock valued at $65,000 after purchasing an additional 35 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company's stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of brokerages have issued reports on META. Zacks Research downgraded Meta Platforms from a "strong-buy" rating to a "hold" rating in a research report on Tuesday, November 18th. Cantor Fitzgerald restated an "overweight" rating and issued a $860.00 price objective (up from $750.00) on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, January 29th. Wells Fargo & Company upped their target price on Meta Platforms from $849.00 to $856.00 and gave the stock an "overweight" rating in a research note on Monday, February 23rd. Wedbush increased their target price on Meta Platforms from $880.00 to $900.00 and gave the company an "outperform" rating in a research report on Thursday, January 29th. Finally, Guggenheim lifted their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $850.00 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a research note on Thursday, January 29th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-nine have given a Buy rating and seven have given a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average price target of $844.44.

Key Headlines Impacting Meta Platforms

Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Meta acquired Moltbook, a viral social network built for AI agents, and will bring Moltbook founders into its Superintelligence Labs — a hire-and-build move that strengthens Meta’s AI research and product roadmap, reinforcing the company’s long-term AI leadership case. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: AMD announced a multiyear mega-deal to supply large-scale AI compute infrastructure to Meta — this supports Meta’s ability to scale AI training and products, and signals capital deployment toward compute that underpins revenue-generating AI services. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: High-profile investor interest and bullish commentary (e.g., Bill Ackman inclusion and articles naming Meta a leading Magnificent 7 pick) are supporting sentiment and could attract fresh inflows into META shares. Article Title
• Neutral Sentiment: Meta publicly denied reports that CEO Mark Zuckerberg sidelined Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, aiming to shore up internal stability and reassure investors about continuity in AI leadership. This reduces short-term governance uncertainty. Article Title
• Neutral Sentiment: Former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun’s startup AMI raised ~$1.03B on a large valuation — a sign of strong investor appetite for alternative AI approaches and a reminder that top AI talent and innovation can show up outside Meta; potential competitive signal but not an immediate revenue threat. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: Meta will charge advertisers a location fee (2%–5%) to offset digital services taxes in some European countries — this raises the effective cost to advertisers, could pressure ad demand or margins in the region, and is being adopted by other big ad platforms as well. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: A Dutch appeals court upheld a ruling requiring Meta to offer chronological feeds in the Netherlands, limiting use of profiling-based ranking there — a regulatory/operational constraint that could increase compliance costs and set precedents for other jurisdictions. Article Title

Insider Transactions at Meta Platforms

In other news, COO Javier Olivan sold 926 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, March 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $637.21, for a total value of $590,056.46. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer directly owned 16,113 shares in the company, valued at $10,267,364.73. This represents a 5.43% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 8,089 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $631.24, for a total transaction of $5,106,100.36. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief technology officer directly owned 2,841 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,793,352.84. This represents a 74.01% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Insiders sold 159,891 shares of company stock valued at $102,464,356 over the last 90 days. 13.61% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Meta Platforms Price Performance

Shares of Meta Platforms stock opened at $654.07 on Wednesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.65 trillion, a P/E ratio of 27.83, a PEG ratio of 1.00 and a beta of 1.30. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $654.53 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $679.33. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 12 month low of $479.80 and a 12 month high of $796.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27, a current ratio of 2.60 and a quick ratio of 2.60.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META - Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, January 28th. The social networking company reported $8.88 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts' consensus estimates of $8.16 by $0.72. Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 38.61% and a net margin of 30.08%.The firm had revenue of $59.89 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $58.33 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $8.02 earnings per share. The business's revenue was up 23.8% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, analysts predict that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 26.7 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, March 26th. Shareholders of record on Monday, March 16th will be paid a dividend of $0.525 per share. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.3%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, March 16th. Meta Platforms's payout ratio is 8.94%.

Meta Platforms Profile

Meta Platforms, Inc NASDAQ: META, formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta's core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

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