Analysts weigh Meta’s future without Instagram, WhatsApp
Wall Street Breakfast
Seeking Alpha
3.8 • 950 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Breakfast, where we cover the top news for investors every morning. |
| 0:08.0 | Thanks for joining us on this Thursday, April 17th, the final day of trading. I'm Julie Morgan. |
| 0:14.7 | Meta's antitrust battle. China is cracking down on car ads, and don't call it a comeback. |
| 0:21.0 | A popular McDonald's menu item is returning. |
| 0:25.2 | Less than a week into a trial that is expected to last up to two months, |
| 0:29.3 | analysts are weighing what could happen to meta-platforms if forced to divest Instagram and WhatsApp. |
| 0:36.3 | Meta-platforms is currently embroiled in antitrust litigation with the FTC |
| 0:41.1 | over its takeovers of Instagram and WhatsApp, which it acquired in 2012 and 2014, respectively. |
| 0:48.7 | Opening arguments in the case were presented before a federal court on Monday. If meta loses, |
| 0:56.2 | it may be ordered to divest itself of one or both of the hugely popular services. So how would meta fare without Instagram and or |
| 1:03.5 | WhatsApp? We checked in with seeking Alpha analyst UFD Capital and Nexus research. UFD Capital believes that META could survive losing Instagram |
| 1:13.8 | and or WhatsApp, saying losing one or more of these platforms will be detrimental, but probably |
| 1:19.9 | not the end of the world. They went on to say that what is less certain is whether Instagram |
| 1:24.7 | and WhatsApp would thrive on their own. UFD Capital says Instagram |
| 1:29.2 | can stand alone just fine but will be less efficient at serving ads without cross-platform data |
| 1:35.9 | from meta. And despite a massive user base, WhatsApp monetization has been relatively slow, they said. |
| 1:42.9 | WhatsApp represents a potential opportunity for meta, however, the app may not be able to |
| 1:48.0 | monetize very well on its own. |
| 1:50.3 | Finally, UFD Capital believes that whatever the outcome of the FTC cases, investors will not |
| 1:56.2 | suffer too much over the long term. |
| 1:58.4 | A potential upside scenario, they said, is the possibility that the |
| 2:02.4 | sum of the parts is worth more than the whole. But for a tech company of this nature, that is unlikely. |
... |
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