Targeting Meta Shares at This Price After Bill Ackman's Big Bet
Some of Ackman's recent bets are struggling but I’m accumulating shares of his latest buy.
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Market action is mixed again on Thursday as technology stocks struggle while the senior indices hold steady.
I am managing positions closely and looking for some new buys to put on my radar. One move by Bill Ackman’s $30 billion Pershing Square investment vehicle caught my attention.
Ackman performed well in 2025 with a gain of 20.9% versus 14% for the S&P 500. His big bets on Alphabet (GOOGL) , Amazon (AMZN) , Chipotle (CMG) and Brookfield (BAM) have done well.
However, he had some duds as well. Nike (NKE) was a loser with about a 30% loss or $600 million, and he is now slightly below breakeven on a big bet on Uber (UBER) . What is most intriguing about Ackman is that he takes very large, concentrated positions and tends to take contrarian investment positions. He does not chase momentum and focuses primarily on value.
Turnaround Thesis and Temporary Trouble
He bought UBER because he felt the threat of competition from Tesla (TSLA) and others was overblown, and he initially bought Chipotle after it was beaten down due to a food safety scandal. Both stocks performed well for a while but recently have been weak and weighed on his performance. Ackman has stated his investment thesis as, "A good time to buy a great business is when it is in temporary trouble."
That worked extremely well for Chipotle but failed with Nike. He recognized his mistake with Nike and sold it, but he is sticking with both Uber and Chipotle.
That brings us to Ackman's newest investment, which is Meta (META) .
What is most interesting about this position is that he views it as another situation where overall sentiment is wrong. In the case of Meta, he believes that fears of excessive capital spending are incorrect. In his annual investor presentation, he stated, "We believe Meta’s current share price under appreciates the company’s long-term upside potential from AI and represents a deeply discounted valuation for one of the world’s greatest businesses."
Concentrated Bets and the Valuation Gap
Currently, the Meta position is about 10% of Pershing’s capital, which is high concentration for a fund but not nearly to the degree of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which has 22.7% in (AAPL) , 19.1% in (AXP) , 10.5% in (BAC) and 9.5% in (KO) . The best investors tend to hold concentrated positions in great names.
Meta shares are down about 16.5% since August, primarily on fears it is spending too much on capital expenditures for artificial intelligence. In its fourth-quarter earnings report, META projected AI-related capital expenditures to expand significantly higher than forecast in the range of $115 billion to $135 billion in 2026. Although Meta is proving that its AI spending is producing a good return, the market is skeptical and punishing it for the increased spending. Pershing wrote that, "We believe concerns around META’s AI-related spending initiatives are underestimating the company’s long-term upside potential from AI."
Magnificent Seven Forward PEG Comparison (February 2026)
If we look at the P/E ratio of META compared to its growth, it looks like the best value in the Magnificent Seven group.
Nvidia (NVDA) and Meta are the only two members of the group trading near or below a PEG of 1.0. While Nvidia’s PEG is technically lower, it is primarily due to massive 40% plus growth estimates that carry higher execution risk. META is likely a safer value play because it achieves a similar PEG with much more conservative 20% growth. Meta is currently trading at roughly 21.9x forward earnings, while the rest of the group, excluding Alphabet, trades at 28x or higher. This valuation gap is what institutional players like Ackman are betting will narrow as Meta proves its AI investments are directly fueling ad returns.
My Meta Game Plan
I have established a small long-term core position in META. It will now be on my screen consistently and I will check on it every day. My initial goal is to build the position as the chart develops. It is pulling back Thursday morning. I see significant technical support on the chart around the 50-day simple moving average, which is around $659. That is the area where I would look to add shares.
When I add, I may put some of the shares in a short-term trading account in anticipation of a quick bounce play. Currently, I am just watching to see how it develops. I actually would like to see the stock lower than higher at this point. That is the beauty of trading incrementally. You do not have to constantly hope for immediate upside.
At the time of publication, DePorre was long META.
