Meta Platforms (META 1.74%) stock has benefited from considerable growth since its IPO in 2012. The social media giant, then named Facebook after its flagship site, grew to become the leading social media stock.
Additionally, sites it acquired or created, such as Instagram, Messenger, and Threads, helped cement its dominance. While it has contended with challenges such as its misstep into the metaverse and the rise of TikTok, its stock has generated massive returns in nearly 13 years of trading.
Meta since its IPO
The stock now known as Meta Platforms launched its IPO on May 18, 2012, when the Facebook parent introduced it at a price of $38 per share. Today, that one share is worth about $623, an approximate 16-fold increase.
However, its growth path was not always a smooth journey. The IPO was unusual, as the stock was well into large-cap territory at the time of its launch, attaining a market cap of more than $80 billion on its first day of trading.
Moreover, the company botched the IPO, with both regulators and investors taking legal action against Meta and the IPO's underwriter amid the poor performance.
Still, after more than a year of struggle, Meta stock began moving higher, as it better leveraged its social media leadership to sell ads and grow its daily user base to 3.3 billion, a level moving toward global saturation.
The only major pullback was in 2021 and 2022, when it attempted to address global saturation by changing the company's name and pivoting into the metaverse. That strategy failed to attract interest, and the stock plunged.
Today, its metaverse segment, Reality Labs, has shifted its focus to artificial intelligence (AI), and with that, investors have bid the stock to record highs.
Indeed, with Meta starting its trading history as a large-cap, it may not earn returns as massive as other "Magnificent Seven" stocks that started trading as small-cap stocks. Still, its growth could continue as it leverages its social media and AI dominance.
