Wedgewood Partners, an investment management company, released its third-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the third quarter, Wedgewood Composite’s net return was 5.8% compared to the Standard & Poor’s 5.9%, the Russell 1000 Growth Index’s 3.2%, and the Russell 1000 Value Index’s 9.4% return for the same period. Year to date, the composite returned 22.4% compared to the 22.1%, 24.6%, and 16.7% returns for the indexes, respectively. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to know its best picks in 2024.

Wedgewood Partners highlighted stocks like Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is a technology company that develops products to connect people. The one-month return of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was -0.81%, and its shares gained 95.49% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On October 23, 2024, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stock closed at $563.69 per share with a market capitalization of $1.426 trillion.

Wedgewood Partners stated the following regarding Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:

"Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was a leading contributor to performance during the quarter. Revenue growth came in at a strong +23% (foreign exchange-neutral) while adjusted expenses grew slower, with operating margins in the Company's core Family of Apps business hitting nearly a sterling 50%. The Company has been a consistent beneficiary of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past several years, investing aggressively behind deep learning recommendation systems that help power products that reach nearly half the population of the planet. Meta's AI investments, combined with its massive scale, allow the Company to quickly spin up new products across its digital advertising real estate to reinforce its competitive positioning. Meta's core Family of Apps products are backed by extremely large and complex (i.e. difficult to copy) AI recommendation systems that have to sort through billions of datapoints in real time and come up with the probability of a user engaged to click. Meta is one of the few companies that has been able to consistently and profitably monetize AI technologies for shareholders and we continue to hold it as a top position in portfolios."

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Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is in third position on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 219 hedge fund portfolios held Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) at the end of the second quarter which was 246 in the previous quarter. In Q2 2024, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) reported $39.1 billion in revenue, a 22% increase compared to Q2 2023.While we acknowledge the potential of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.