The Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) share price climbed 27% in September, clocking its best month since 2013. It turns out the way to win investors over isn’t a metaverse – it’s an app that argues with your insurance company for you.
There are a few reasons for the move, but the big question is whether it’s a sign to buy. Is the company – and the stock – finally getting some momentum?
What happened?
Meta shares came into September with momentum. At the end of August, the company settled with 51 US states and territories over claims its platforms are designed to be addictive for teenagers.
The headline figure of $17.1bn sounds like a lot, but only $12.1bn is guaranteed. And that’s spread over 10 years, in the context of a company that booked $60.8bn in revenue last quarter alone.
Call me sceptical, but I doubt that’ll be Meta’s last court case. The bigger news came in two connected parts:
- Muse: an AI agent that helps consumers switch insurance, find discount codes, fill grocery baskets. It overtook ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple‘s US App Store.
- Hardware: new Ray-Ban glasses, a $1,300 VR headset due next spring, and a ‘Muse Charm’.
With data on more than 3bn people, Meta knows a lot about what consumers want. That should be a big advantage in an AI world and the company is looking to make the most of it. Amazon, however, almost immediately blocked Muse from its marketplace. How that resolves, we’ll see.
I’ve always seen Meta’s AI strategy as high-risk. It’s guided for up to $145bn in capex this year with no cloud business to rent that capacity out.
Reality Labs has also shown that Meta isn’t infallible when it comes to spending on bad ideas. Muse however, is the first big sign of vindication.
What to do?
Buying a stock near an all-time high high never feels right. But that’s a bad argument. Meta shares hit a record in September 2021 and the share price has roughly doubled since then. Just because the stock’s up doesn’t mean it can’t keep going.
| Metric | Meta |
|---|---|
| Share price (25 Sept) | $751.66 |
| Record close (Aug 2025) | $790.00 |
| Trailing P/E | 29.3 |
| 5-year median P/E | 25.8 |
| Q2 free cash flow | $784m |
It’s also worth noting that the share price is actually only slightly higher than it was a year ago. And the 12 months in between have been choppy.
What matters more are the valuation multiples. At a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 29, the current share price reflects significant growth expectations going forward.
Muse makes money from transaction fees, rather than advertising (which has been Meta’s traditional model). Will that work? It’s hard to say.
I’m also wary that Meta attracts more antitrust attention than I’d like. The attempt to break up Instagram and WhatsApp failed last November, but I’ve no doubt there will be others.
Waiting for worry
The time to think about buying Meta shares is when the market is worried. That does happen – in 2022, Apple’s privacy changes and a first-ever fall in daily users sent the stock below $100.
It’s not always easy to be brave in those situations, because the risks are real. Right now however, nobody seems to be worried – and that’s why I’m looking at other opportunities.
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Stephen Wright owns shares in Amazon and Apple.
