META Earnings Breakdown + How Insiders Trade

Ahoy Metamates! 🚢 🏴‍☠️

I was waiting to write the earnings issue - secretly hoping that Mark would trade shares - and he did. FYI: He hasn’t sold a single share in 2 years (and the drama behind why is next level) so this is a pretty substantial development.

This comes at the heels of increased sales from other executives, and some pretty solid developments in Meta’s investment narrative. Outside of Reality Labs, which continues to be a dumpster fire for the time being - although I personally remain very bullish.

In this week’s subscriber only issue:

• The tea on why Mark stopped trading for nearly 2 years ( spoiler: nothing to do with the stock price)

• How much stock each Meta executive is selling and at when

• Key themes from the Earnings Call

• Who does Meta owe $18B to and why?

• Analyst stock price predictions from Goldman, Morgan Stanley etc

• Foreign exchange rates are helping Meta’s stock

• Why we’ll be hearing a lot more on Whats App

• AI’s role in Meta’s revised metaverse strategy

The History Of Meta’s Executive Insider Stock Sales

Its not too long ago that Mark’s trading was so exemplary that the Wall Street Journal wrote an entire expose on it. And then, unexpectedly, he stopped trading for nearly two years. What happened?

Reputation damaging lawsuits happened:

• Mark stopped trading in Nov 2021

• Around the same time, there was a lawsuit against Meta alleging insider trading related to Cambridge Analytica

• It was ultimately dismissed - right at the same time as Mark’s trades halted.

• What very few people know is that there was a second lawsuit in 2021, this time targeting executives and board members directly.

The first lawsuit focused a lot of attention on Mark and Sheryl’s sales in particular but went after the company as a whole.

… and for awhile almost all major executives at Meta, except the GC stopped using 10b5-1 plans, despite the lawsuit being dismissed.

Sales likely stopped bc the second lawsuit was - should I say- a bit more serious. Serious enough for almost the whole exec team to stop trading? Evidently so.