How to Buy Facebook Stock (META)

The relatively newly christened Meta Platforms is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and is one of the largest companies in the world by market capitalisation. 

Investors can buy shares in Meta by registering with a broker which offer access to the US stock market. In this article, we’ll take a look at the prospect of investing in Meta Platforms, some of the potential risks involved and provide a step-by-step guide of how to invest in the tech giant. 

The information in this article is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions.

A Short History of Meta Platforms

What began as a site designed to connect people at Harvard University has evolved and spread around the globe. Before we take a look at how to invest in Facebook, let’s take a quick look at some of the highlights of its history. 

• 2004: TheFacebook is launched by Mark Zuckerberg and fellow student Eduardo Saverin as a way for undergraduate students at Harvard University to connect. 
• 2006: Facebook is made accessible to the general public. 
• 2012: In April, Facebook acquires Instagram for $1 billion before going public via an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in May. 
• 2013: Facebook shares added to the S&P 500. 
• 2014: Acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion. 
• 2021: Facebook rebrands to Meta Platforms signalling the company’s intent to pivot more towards developing the metaverse. 
• 2024: Meta Platforms pays its first dividend. 

Meta Earnings 

In the table below, we have highlighted some of the key indicators of Meta Platform's performance in the first nine months of 2025.

Source: Meta Platforms – Third Quarter Earnings 2025. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. 

Meta Platforms also reported an average of 3.54 billion daily active people across its applications in September 2025, an increase of 8% year on year. To put this number in context, there are roughly 8.2 billion people in the world. 

The drop in net income and EPS highlighted above was due to the impact of a significant one-time tax provision in the third quarter of 2025.  

However, operating income rose strongly during the period. Nevertheless, one area of Meta's business has been losing a considerably amount of money for more than five years. 

In the table below, we’ve highlighted the breakdown of operating income generated by Meta’s segments, Family of Apps and Reality Labs, for the nine months ended 30 September 2025. 

The Family of Apps (FoA) segment includes revenue generated by Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and other services. Reality Labs includes Meta’s virtual, augmented and mixed reality consumer hardware, software and content. 

Source: Meta Platforms – Third Quarter Earnings 2025. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. 

Meta Stock Analysis

For a long time, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg resisted taking the company public, whilst also rejecting a number of buyout offers. 

By the time the company eventually did go public in 2012, it already reportedly had 845 million active monthly users and was valued by underwriters at more than $100 billion. At the time, this was the largest valuation for a newly public company ever. 

Since then, Meta Platforms has grown to become one of the largest companies in the world, but it hasn’t all been plain sailing over the last few years.  

After soaring for much of 2020 and 2021, Meta shares abruptly changed course towards the end of 2021. Amidst a challenging economic environment – with soaring inflation, rising interest rates and an uncertain outlook – Meta shares plummeted. From its 2021 high, share price sank 77%, hitting a seven-year low in November 2022. 

However, since hitting this low, share price has rebounded strongly. From its November 2022 low to the end of November 2025, Meta shares gained more than 600%. For reference, over the same period, the S&P 500 index gained around 84% (not accounting for dividends). 

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. 

What’s Behind the Recovery?

Much of the reason for 2022’s slump in share price was that, due to the weakening economic outlook, advertisers began to rein in spending. At the same time, inflation was pushing up costs.

Advertising makes up the vast majority of Meta’s total revenue (98% in the first nine months of 2025). Consequently, the slowdown in ad spending put Meta’s revenue under pressure at a time when costs were also rising, hitting its top and bottom lines. 

Nevertheless, following the 2022 low, certain factors have aided Meta’s recovery: 

• Ad Recovery: Increased advertising spending restored Meta’s main cash engine, causing revenue to return to growth. 
• Cost Cutting: Meta implemented significant cost cutting measures to get costs under control. 
• Capital Returns: Meta announced large share buyback programmes and introduced its first ever dividend in 2024. 
• Improved Investor Sentiment: Meta has also benefitted from investor enthusiasm around artificial intelligence, an area which Meta is investing in heavily. 

Is Meta a Good Stock to Buy or Not?

In the following sections, we will take a look at the pros of investing in Meta Platforms before analysing the risks involved. 

The Bull Case

Here are some of the reasons why investors might consider buying Meta Platforms in 2025. 

Core Business Strength

As highlighted earlier, Meta’s core advertising business is performing robustly through its FoA segment. As well as generating lots of revenue, this is a business with healthy margins.  

In the third quarter of 2025, Meta reported an operating margin of 40%, but this includes the losses emanating from Reality Labs. If we discount Reality Labs, its FoA segment recorded a considerably higher operating margin of 51%.  

An average of 3.54 billion uses Meta’s apps daily (as of September 2025). That’s almost half the world’s population. There are not many companies in the world which have that level of global reach and, whilst that remains the case, Meta is likely to stay popular with advertisers. 

AI as a Potential Catalyst

Like many tech stocks, Meta is investing heavily in artificial intelligence. 

In 2023, Meta launched its own AI chatbot, powered by Llama, its Large Language Model (LLM), the fourth iteration of which was released earlier this year. 

In May, Meta’s AI assistant reportedly reached 1 billion monthly active users. Continued growth could potentially improve engagement across Meta’s applications which, in turn, could make it even more popular with advertisers. 

Capital Returns Programme

Meta has also worked on improving its capital returns programme in recent years. It began its share buyback programme in 2017 and, in 2024, repurchased $29.75 billion of its Class A common stock.  

According to its annual report, “as of 31 December 2024, $51.28 billion remained available and authorized for repurchases”.  

As well as its buyback programme, Meta started paying quarterly dividends in 2024, paying a total annual dividend of $2 per share over the course of the year. However, its dividend yield is modest - just 0.3% at the time of writing, 8 December 2025 - and it should be noted that future dividends are never guaranteed. 

The Risks

We’ve already seen that Meta generates practically all of its revenue from advertising. 

Such reliance on this source of revenue makes it rather vulnerable to periods of economic uncertainty or downturns, when advertising budgets are typically amongst the first to be cut. 

In 2022, we witnessed such a scenario where advertisers pulled back on spending and, as a result, Meta’s share price tanked. Another period of economic uncertainty could produce the same effect. 

Reality Labs

Another risk of investing in Meta is something else we’ve already touched on, Reality Labs.  

This segment has been haemorrhaging money for more than five years as Mark Zuckerberg has backed heavily investing in the metaverse. Since 2020, the division’s cumulative losses are more than $70 billion. 

For the time being, Meta is able to absorb and somewhat mask these substantial losses through the robustness of its core advertising business.  

However, presumably investors will not ignore these losses forever. At some point, shareholders will want to see some kind of return on the billions of dollars being poured into the metaverse.

Furthermore, if we see another ad slump reminiscent of 2022 which dents Meta’s main revenue stream, investors may start to pay more attention to losses from the metaverse investment.

How to Buy Facebook Shares

For investors who are interested in investing in Meta Platforms, they will need to open an account with a broker which offers access to the US stock market.  

In the following steps, we’ll explain how to invest in Facebook with Admirals; however, you are likely to find that the process will be similar with many other online brokers as well. 

• Register with Admirals, open an Invest.MT5 account and complete the onboarding process. 
• Log in to the Dashboard and click ‘Invest’ next to your account details to open the Admirals Platform. 
• Search for Meta Platforms and open the instrument page. 
• Here, you can enter the number of shares you wish to buy in the order window on the right-hand side of the screen. You can also choose to buy fractional shares in increments of 0.01. 
• As well as using a market order to buy Facebook shares at the current market price, investors can also choose to set pending orders which will be executed if share price hits a predetermined level. 
• Once you’ve completed filling in the order window, click ‘Place Order’!  

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