Four billionaires keep buying stocks

While Wall Street has seen volatility again over the past few weeks, it seems like another special year for the stock market.

However, the fast-rising and expensive market has not stopped billionaire fund managers from putting their money into growth stocks that have been leading these gains since March 2020. According to the SEC's 13F filing, billionaires keep buying these 4 fast-growing stocks.

Pinterest :Ole Andreas Halvorsen ( Viking Global )

The first is billionaire Ole Andreas Halvorsen, who manages more than $36 billion in assets for Viking Global investors. In the third quarter, Halvorsen and his team didn't get enough social media up-and-coming Pinterest (NYSE:PINS). Viking Global opened 7.23 million shares in the company, valued at about $368 million at the end of September.

With vaccination rates rising and social life returning to normal across the country, Pinterest's stock price has been particularly hard hit, despite most of the pandemic in 2021, with Pinterest's monthly active users (MAU) falling continuously over the past two quarters, while Wall Street's punishment for the stock has been relentless.

But Halvorsen seemed to recognize a value. Even though MAU has seen consecutive declines for two consecutive quarters, Pinterest has no problem monetizing its user base. While MAU grew by less than 1% year-over-year in the third quarter, global and international average revenue per user increased by 37% and 81%, respectively. This is a clear reflection of Pinterest's strong advertising pricing power, with merchants preferring to pay a premium to get their information in front of the company's 444 million MAU.

Also, as I've pointed out before, Pinterest's platform is the perfect middleman between online shoppers and merchants looking for customers. Pinterest's entire premise is to let users share with the world what they are interested in, places, and services. All Pinterest has to do is connect users with merchants who can meet their interests. In other words, the platform allows for highly targeted advertising.

With the price-to-earnings ratio (PEG) close to 1x, Pinterest seems to be a good deal.

Zoom ：Jeff Yass （Susquehanna International ）

Another billionaire who can't keep his distance from growth stocks is Jeff Yass from Susquehanna International. Yass, who manages $745 billion in assets, has an insatiable appetite for Zoom Video Communications (NASDAQ:ZM) stock. In the third quarter, Susquehanna increased its stake in Zoom by 2.47 million shares or 274% sequentially.

It doesn't sound like a record-breaking, but cloud-based web conferencing company Zoom has also fallen victim to its success for much of 2021. With some employees returning to the office, Zoom's triple-digit sales growth has normalized to double digits. For a company that was once worth more than 50 times its sales, this became a problem.

However, Yass believes that Zoom's utility extends far beyond the widespread spread of the epidemic. The past 21 months have shown how valuable its services are in promoting a mixed work environment and keeping projects on track, even back in the office. Zoom's leading share of web-based conferences in the U.S. is unlikely to be snatched up anytime soon.

Zoom's revenue channels also go far beyond web conferencing, such as the company's cloud-based phone system Zoom Phone, which provides users with a digital alternative to traditional communication platforms.

The last thing investors should consider is that CEO and founder Yuan Zheng is still the majority shareholder and keeps the pain of the skin in the first place for the interests of shareholders.

Palantir Technologies: Jim Simons

Tech stock darling Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR) is another fast-growing stock that was bought by billionaire fund managers, particularly Renaissance Technologies' Jim Simons, who couldn't get enough Palantir in the third quarter. Renaissance Technology, which manages more than $77 billion in assets, bought 12.1 million shares of Palantir stock in the quarter ended September.

Consistent with the theme, Palantir didn't have the best year, but unlike Pinterest and Zoom, it had little to do with the outbreak. Instead, Palantir has been criticized for its valuation, which is sometimes as high as 40 times its sales.

While such a high valuation multiple may be difficult to digest, Simons seems to understand that no other public company can offer what Palantir has to offer. The U.S. federal government uses the company's data mining-driven Gotham platform to cull and organize large amounts of data and process tasks. Meanwhile, Palantir's Foundry platform is geared toward enterprise customers and aims to streamline their operations with more understandable big data.

Currently, large U.S. military contracts spanning years have pushed the company's annual sales growth to 40 percent or more, but Foundry offers more long-term commitments. With limited use of Gotham outside the U.S., Foundry has a large pool of potential customers who will benefit from a better understanding of complex data.

Meta Platforms: John Overdeck and David Siegel

Last but not least, billionaires John Overdeck and David Siegel, who run Two Sigma Investments, have been unable to stop pressing likes on Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB) (formerly Facebook). In the third quarter, Dossy Investment Management bought nearly 535,000 shares of Meta stock, worth $181.5 million as of Sept. 30.

Overdeck and Siegel's love for Meta may have stemmed from the huge success of the social media platform Facebook. In the third quarter, 2.91 billion MAU visited Facebook and another 670 million MAU went to Meta's other assets such as WhatsApp and Instagram. These 3.58 billion people — more than half of the global adult population — visit Meta-owned assets at least once a month. It's no surprise that the company has extraordinary advertising pricing power.

The crazy thing about Meta Platforms is that it doesn't even meaningfully monetize WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. This year it will generate more than $100 billion in advertising revenue, almost all of which comes from Facebook and Instagram. If the company does monetize these channels, it expects sales and profit potential to surge again.

Overdeck and Siegel may also be excited about Meta's focus on the metaverse (the next-generation iteration of the internet), allowing users to interact in a 3D virtual environment. The company plans to invest $10 billion in meta-universes in 2021, and spending will increase year over year in the years that follow.

If Meta is able to become a key player in the virtual reality and augmented reality (AR) space, it will offer a second huge growth opportunity in addition to its massive social media advertising revenue.

This article originated from the financial world