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Meta’s Platfroms’ New Bull: Why Billionaire Bill Ackman Is Buying
Magnificent Seven giant Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), despite failing to hold recent gains, has just received backing from a massive investor.
Meta shares soared over 10% on Jan. 29, as investors reacted to the firm’s latest earnings report. The stock closed at approximately $738 that day.
Since then, however, shares have given up all of those gains and more, closing near $640 on Feb. 13. This comes even though Meta is forecasting 30% revenue growth next quarter, something it hasn’t achieved since 2021.
Still, big fish are buying into the company’s story. This includes Pershing Square Capital Management, headed by billionaire Bill Ackman. Ackman’s initial fame came from his shorting of the Municipal Bond Insurance Association (MBIA). MBIA had significant exposure to subprime mortgage-backed securities during the Great Financial Crisis. Ackman generated huge returns from this play after MBIA’s stock collapsed.
In general, Ackman’s willingness to put his investments into the public eye has given him a place in the financial zeitgeist. Let’s dive into Ackman’s investment in Meta and his highly bullish statements around the firm.
Pershing Takes Huge Stake in META
Pershing Square released its 2026 Annual Investor Presentation on Feb. 11. The presentation stated that Meta accounts for 10% of the company’s capital as of the end of 2025.
This makes the investment equal to approximately $2 billion. Pershing directly pushed back on one of the key fears around Meta in its presentation.
“We believe Meta’s current share price underappreciates the company’s long-term upside potential from AI and represents a deeply discounted valuation for one of the world’s greatest businesses.”
Notably, Pershing says as of Nov. 24, 2025, it purchased Meta at an average price of $625. This is significant, considering that Meta’s Feb. 13 closing price is less than 3% above this level.
This, along with Pershing’s statements, suggests that it still sees a lot of room for upside ahead in META shares.
Detailing Pershing’s Investment Thesis on META
Pershing’s presentation (slide 65) details the key strengths that it sees in Meta’s business. Importantly, the slide does not mention Meta’s general purpose AI models, or the potential that it will become a leader in this domain. This is notable, as some investors view the company’s lack of progress here as a sign that it will not reap enough benefits from its massive AI spending. Pershing’s slides implicitly push back on this idea.
Pershing focuses on the fact that AI is driving success in the company’s most important driver: its core advertising business. It states “Meta’s business model is one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI integration.”
Specifically, Pershing notes that Meta’s AI-driven content recommendation systems are improving user engagement. Furthermore, leveraging AI allows the company to deliver more relevant and personalized advertisements to users.
Investors can overlook the importance of this in discussions around Meta’s AI strategy. Hyperscalers like Google parent company Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) have been able to more clearly show the gains their AI investments are generating. Much of this comes through their cloud businesses as customers rent AI infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Meta’s AI-backed progress is more difficult to see, embedded within the growth of its advertising business.
The key to Meta’s strategy is maximizing the return on advertising spend (ROAS) that businesses can generate. ROAS improvements, driven by AI, increase the likelihood that businesses will spend more of their advertising budget on Meta’s apps.
With over 3.5 billion users, Meta has an absolutely massive pool of potential customers that businesses can target. However, supporting improved targeting and engagement across this huge user base also requires large AI investments. This dynamic challenges the idea that Meta’s spending will not yield an adequate payoff.
META’s Ads Business Needs to Keep Chugging
Overall, Pershing’s investment is clearly a positive sign for Meta’s outlook. Meta’s revenue growth accelerated in every quarter during 2025, and it expects growth to accelerate again next quarter. This provides strong evidence that Meta’s AI strategy is working. However, the company still has a lot to prove. While Meta’s recent growth is impressive, continuing to drive upgrades in its advertising business remains central to its bull thesis.
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Amid the “SaaS Apocalypse”, These 3 Names Are Boosting Buybacks
To the dismay of many investors, the rout in software stocks has yet to see a significant reprieve. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (BATS: IGV), a proxy for the industry’s performance, is down nearly 22% in 2026.
Amid a period of profound weakness, several software names are taking a confidence-inspiring action: announcing share buyback authorizations. In the case of these beaten-down companies, management teams are signaling a belief that markets undervalue their shares.
DT: Keeping a Lid on 2026 Losses and Boosting Buyback Capacity
First up is observability platform provider Dynatrace (NYSE: DT). The company’s software allows customers to monitor the performance of applications that are critical to their business operations. It identifies bottlenecks and other issues in these applications, helping customers understand and rectify problems.
Dynatrace shares have held up better than many software names in 2026, down only about 14%. This was partly due to the firm’s latest earnings report, in which it beat estimates on sales and adjusted earnings per share (EPS).
The stock gained 7% after the results. Still, shares remain down around 40% from their 52-week high.
Notably, Dynatrace also announced a significant $1 billion share repurchase authorization. This is equal to a very large 9% of the firm’s approximately $11 billion market capitalization.
It is double the size of the firm’s previous authorization from May 2024, when Dynatrace shares were worth significantly more than they are today. The company didn’t mince words with its reasoning behind the new buyback program, saying it underscores “the view that our shares are undervalued”.
PEGA’s Buyback Capacity Soars Above 10% of Its Market Cap
Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA) hasn’t been as fortunate as Dynatrace in 2026, with its shares down around 26% on the year. The tech companyprovides business process management (BPM) software that helps clients automate important internal workflows. Its GenAI Blueprint tool is particularly intriguing. It allows companies to easily build new tools or improve existing ones with minimal coding knowledge.
As investors worry that artificial intelligence (AI) will make coding easier and thus threaten traditional software, Pega is positioning itself to benefit from this very shift.
Despite beating estimates on sales and adjusted EPS in its latest earnings, Pegasystems shares sold off by almost 12% after the report. This came as the company’s 2026 guidance may have left investors wanting more.
Pega also announced an additional $1 billion share buyback authorization. This is equal to a whopping 13.5% of the company’s approximately $7.4 billion market capitalization.
The company wasn’t very explicit about its reasoning, simply saying, “This authorization reflects our confidence in the durability of our cash flows and our commitment to disciplined capital allocation.” Still, the size of this program in relation to the firm’s market cap suggests that it sees value in its shares.
Down 30% in 2026, SHOP Announces $2 Billion Buyback Plan
Last up is e-commerce platform Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP). This stock has been a particularly big loser in 2026, down around 30%. The company’s tools, which allow businesses to build and operate direct-to-consumer e-commerce platforms, have seen extensive growth.
Overall, the company has seen its revenue rise by 20% or more year-over-year for 14 quarters in a row. The company also beat estimates on sales and earnings in its latest report. However, the stock still fell by over 6% in each of the following two trading days.
Alongside its earnings, the company also announced a $2 billion share buyback authorization. Although this authorization is larger in absolute terms than those of DT and PEGA, it is much smaller relative to the size of SHOP itself. It represents approximately 1.4% of the firm’s $146 billion market capitalization.
However, it is a positive signal nonetheless. This is particularly true, considering that there appears to be no record of Shopify announcing a share buyback plan in the past.
Buybacks: One Positive Indicator Amid Software’s Stumble
Despite the confidence that these firms are displaying with their buyback authorizations, investors should be keenly aware of the uphill battle the software industry is facing.
Markets are clearly very concerned about software incumbents seeing their growth limited amid the emergence of new artificial intelligence (AI) tools. It is likely that the release of such tools will only increase, potentially extending this significant headwind for the industry. Thus, investors should be highly selective if attempting to “buy the dip” in software stocks.
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NVIDIA Analysts Say Buy Ahead of Q4 Earnings, With Conviction
If you are wondering whether NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is a Buy ahead of its Q4 2025 earnings release, the odds are high that it is. Indications from analyst sentiment trends, institutional activity, valuation, and technical setups suggest this stock rally is approximately halfway over.
NVIDIA could rise from the $180 level to well over $360, and potentially as high as $520 or higher over time. The question is what could move the stock, and there are catalysts ahead. Not only are the Q4 results due in late February and likely to be strong, but the annual GTC developer conferenceis slated for mid-March and expected to drive stock prices industry-wide.
NVIDIA Analysts Trends Say NVIDIA Is a Deep-Value
Growth and margin concerns aside, the analyst trends reflect a robustly bullish market posture and a deep-value opportunity for NVIDIA investors. MarketBeat’s data reveals coverage swelling on a trailing 12-month basis to 52 analysts, who rate the stock as a Buy with a 96% Buy-rating bias, and a consensus price target forecasting a 45% upside.
As strong as the 45% upside is, the trends include price target increases and above-consensus initiations that point to the high end of the range. A move to $352 offers approximately 95% upside for investors and is unlikely to be the end of this trend.
Recent updates include commentary from GF Securities and UBS. GF Securities is looking ahead to the GTC developer conference for several catalysts, including news on co-packaged optics, a rack-scale language processing solution, and other hardware updates. UBS, on the other hand, is bullish on the pre-release setup, noting favorable conditions including supply chain checks, lingering doubts despite persistently optimistic management, and tepid stock price action over the past few months.
NVIDIA Stock Price Is Wound Up, Ready to Advance in Early 2026
The technical setup is bullish. NVIDIA’s stock price has been consolidating within a range and has formed a Bullish Pennant Pattern. The Bullish Pennant Pattern is a consolidation and potential continuation signal that forms within a longer-term bull market. If confirmed, the implication is that stock prices will advance a dollar amount equal to the preceding rally at the low end of the range, and an amount equal to the percentage gains of the preceding rally at the high end. In this case, that’s a move worth approximately $90 (about 50% upside) to 100% at the high end.
The technical movement is backed up by the valuation outlook. NVIDIA commands a premium relative to its current-year earnings due to its growth outlook, but the market has yet to price in its full potential. As it stands, NVIDIA trades at under 10X its 2035 forecast, suggesting it could rise by 100% to over 200% in that time.
A 100% stock price advance would align the 2035 valuation with the broad market average relative to current year earnings. Assuming NVIDIA retains its blue-chip tech premium, the stock is more likely to trade above 30X 2035 earnings by 2035, setting up a 200% stock price advance.
Institutions Aggressively Accumulate NVIDIA Stock in Early Q1 2026
Institutional data from MarketBeat reveals this group aggressively accumulating NVIDIA stock. The group owns about 65% of the shares, runs a balance of $3.50 per $1 sold on a trailing 12-month basis, and ramped activity to over $4.50 to $1 in early 2026. This provides a solid support base upon pullbacks, limiting the downside risk, while providing a tailwind for any rally. In this scenario, NVIDIA stock is likely to continue trading within its range until the catalyst emerges, which is only a few weeks away.
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