Welcome back to Cheddar News is closing bell. Everyone
who is facebook's parent company, meta switches, its
business focus. There's also a C suite shakeup underway
. Ceo Sheryl Sandberg announcing this week that she's leaving
the company after a 14 year tenure and remove Communists
social media focused company tries to switch its focus to
the metaverse and as it faces slowing growth, rising
costs and certainly more scandals. So joining me now
is Doug ace drop managing partner at exponential investment partners
, that's an alternative investment manager. Doug, it's
good to see you, it is my understanding that
you do in your portfolio own shares of meta.
What does this departure mean for meta shareholders? Well
, yeah, it's a it's a big move in
the sense that Cheryl has been such a prominent part
of the company and a very visible member of the
team and she's been there so long but as far
as affecting the operations of the company and how how
it's being run and and its success going forward,
it's probably not a huge impact in that. They
are very well positioned, they are bringing somebody up
who's been there a long time who has been the
Chief revenue officer and so I I don't think it
means major changes but symbolically it's it's important and significant
. Um she came in when Mark Zuckerberg was 23
years old, so she's really helped build this company
from the very early days into the behemoth it's become
now so meta stock, yep, we're taking a
look at meta stock dug it is up about 6%
today. Originally we had seen it drop on the
news before we got word from Mark Zuckerberg of course
the founder and Ceo ceo of this company as well
as who Sheryl Sandberg's replacement will be in the wake
of this news. Are you buying selling or holding
your shares of meta? Well, we're very bullish
on the stock and have been before and after this
announcement, the stock has just gotten way too cheap
. Um you know, it's a powerhouse business with
40% plus operating margins And they've got 3.6 billion monthly
active users across all their apps. So we we
think it's very undervalued in a powerhouse business with great
cash flow. Um And we we think Cheryl played
a big part in building that but now it's a
more mature business that can kind of continue perhaps without
her leadership there, you know, she'll be missed
but they have a deep bench of executives who can
carry on. She did, let's talk about the
future obviously Doug because that's how the share price will
be trading going forward. And Javier Ole von set
to take on the C. 00. Role.
You mentioned obviously someone who comes internally from META now
getting promoted to this role. What do we know
about him and are you keen on the new ceo
appointment? Yeah, we think he's a great choice
. He was very instrumental in building the global and
international operations of the company and he's been responsible for
growing the revenue generating infrastructure and executive team, so
that's obviously a critical element to the company. We
think the biggest change with him is going to be
, he's not quite as high profile as Cheryl was
he? He's not really, he doesn't have a
high profile outside of the company and so that will
be different, that probably puts more on to Mark
Zuckerberg's shoulders in terms of being the face of the
company. Cheryl was may be able to take a
little bit of that off his plate, but he
can certainly handle that. He's used to play in
that role. So I think you've got more of
a low key, less, less of an outside
profile type executive in there. So my last question
, doug, my last question to you is we
know a bit about Sheryl Sandberg's replacement as C 00
. But the big question is the opportunity in the
metaverse and that's gonna be Javier the new Ceo's role
to effectively steer this company into a revenue generating machine
in the metaverse. As a shareholder of meta,
what opportunity do you see for this company in the
metaverse? Well, it's, it's, it's infinite
and also very unknown at this point. Um they're
spending a lot of money on it and hoping it
turns into something significant. Uh no one really knows
for sure how that's gonna play out. It's a
bit of a pipe dream right now, A lot
of people are, are trying to navigate the next
Web three oh and the metaverse and you know,
at this point it's not a big revenue generator,
it's more of a cost center, but I don't
think this affects their ambitions in that, in that
world. I think that's coming straight from the top
from Zuckerberg, that they want to be very big
in this new next generation of of the web and
the metaverse. So I think that will continue as
it would have with Cheryl there as well. I
don't think that changes too much and they certainly have
the wherewithal to spend a lot of money on that
area before they have to see a return. So
we think that continues well, certainly, I think
big picture Wall Street's still pretty bullish on the metaverse
, but you're right, we'll wait to see how
it all eventually shakes out. That's dug a strap
. Managing partner at Exponential Investment Partners. Doug thank 00:06:01.899 --> you.