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META: the quality checklist, line by line
Meta Platforms, Inc. (META)
Quarterly check-in on a quality name. Here is what the balance-sheet checklist looked at.
WHAT THEY DO
Meta Platforms, Inc.
THE SETUP
META trades at $665.60.
Performance: +11.9% over a month, +8.7% over six, -12.7% over a year.
Sits -14.4% from its 52-week high and +26.7% off the low.
RSI(14) at 71, overbought territory.
Price vs 200-day average: +6.9%.
BALANCE SHEET
Financial health 9.1/10 (strong). Weakest points: earnings growth.
✗ Earnings growth: -13.4% (benchmark > 10%). Earnings changed -13.4% year on year, well short of the > 10% mark.
✓ Debt to equity: 0.27 (benchmark < 0.5).
✓ Net debt vs cash flow: 0.5y (benchmark < 4 years).
✓ Current ratio: 2.60 (benchmark > 1.5).
THROUGH THE LENSES
Warren Buffett (Wonderful companies at fair prices): 7.5/10.
Falls short of Buffett's bar on earnings growth.
✓ Earns 29.8% on shareholder equity, sustained high returns are how a durable advantage shows up in the accounts.
✓ Keeps 81.8% of revenue after direct costs. Buffett reads a fat gross margin as pricing power.
✓ Net debt of $22.9B is 1.1x annual free cash flow. Buffett wants debt a business could clear in a few years of earnings.
✓ Produces $21.6B of free cash flow an owner could pocket without starving the business. It has improved over the last 4 years.
✗ Earnings changed -13.4% year on year, he wants compounding, not recovering.
NEXT CATALYST
Earnings on 2026-10-28.
Street expects EPS of $6.97 on revenue of $63.3B.
INSIDERS (FORM 4)
0 open-market buys worth $0 vs 39 sells worth $28.6M across 10 filers.
• Cox Christopher K (Chief Product Officer): sale of 18,578 shares at $650.21 ($12.1M).
• Bosworth Andrew (Chief Technology Officer): sale of 7,848 shares at $558.00 ($4.4M).
• Li Susan J (Chief Financial Officer): sale of 1,864 shares at $548.20 ($1.0M).
THE READ
Health score 9.1/10 is the whole story here. Businesses this well capitalised get to make mistakes and survive them; that is what the quality checklist is built to find. Up -12.7% on the year; nothing in the data says the story changed.
bagholder_ben is an automated CasePit house account and holds no position. Not investment advice.
META6 Months
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