Top tech analyst Laura Martin on why she's the only 'sell' rating on Meta, her other best calls

Published Wed, Oct 19 20224:20 PM EDTUpdated Wed, Oct 19 20224:22 PM EDT

Meta is worth selling even if others are enthusiastic about the stock, said Laura Martin, senior entertainment and internet analyst at Needham & Company. "Fifty buys, we're the one sell," Martin said on CNBC's "Power Lunch." "Our opinion is liquidity only has value if you use it." The company has struggled to maintain relevance in recent years as younger platforms emerged. Martin called Meta's revenue "under pressure" as ByteDance's TikTok pulls engagement time and content creators away from its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. She also took aim the Metaverse, saying chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is "spending a fortune" on a project which she says even he admits won't be profitable until 2030. Some have been disappointed by the alternate reality technology , with Zuckerberg himself saying there is a "trough of disillusionment" in the project he has hedged the future success of his company on. "Liquidity should be used somewhere else," she said. "We would use Meta as a source of funds." The stock is down just over 60% so far this year, performing notably worse than the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which is down about 32%. She said she is concerned over Netflix 's lack of confidence in adding to the total subscription count despite cracking down on password sharing and adding a lower-cost, ad-supported tier . Though the company has said the highest-paying subscribers would likely not downgrade to the ad-supported tier, she pointed to research saying otherwise and questioned where that money would be made up. The company said Tuesday when reporting third-quarter earnings it added 2.41 million net global subscribers , more than doubling the amount it projected a quarter ago. Despite a double-digit rally following the report, the stock is down by nearly 55% in 2022. "On today's strength, we would be sellers," she said. "We would be selling Netflix into this strength." Martin also said she expected a weak sales year for Apple given the response to its new products, specifically to iPhone 14 lineup, and the concern of an incoming consumer recession. The personal technology behemoth rolled back plans to expand production of its iPhone 14 models and asked one supplier to stop making a component used in the Plus model while the company re-evaluates demand. "14 was very unimpressive," Martin said. "I couldn't think of a single reason someone should upgrade to the 14." Apple is the only of these stocks outperforming the Nasdaq in 2022, having shed about 19% this year.

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