- An unidentified options trader bet $40 million on further gains in Meta's share price.
- The bet involves over 26,000 call options to purchase Meta shares at $320 apiece by January 17, 2025.
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta may be halfway through its "year of efficiency," but it has had a good run on the stock markets.
The company's shares are up nearly 160% this year, and one options trader is betting that these gains have further to go, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The unidentified trader is so confident of Meta's upside they paid $40.6 million in premiums for a series of spread trades, the media outlet reported without specifying the mechanism of the calculations.
The trade involved more than 26,000 call options contracts, which allow the buyer to purchase shares at $320 each by January 17, 2025, per Bloomberg.
The trades are hedged against 52,000 $600 calls expiring in December 2025, per the media outlet.
The outlet calculated Meta shares will have to rise a further 8% before the trader can break even. The trades occurred at the same time on the same exchange, signaling they were likely executed by the same trader, per the report.
The upbeat bet on Meta's stock price mirrors a call from Goldman Sachs earlier this month which endorsed the tech giant's push into artificial intelligence.
"Our team views Meta as an emerging AI leader that's scaling its investment into AI development and computing capacity," wrote Eric Sheridan, an analyst at the investment banking giant.
Meta's stock price surge is a major turnaround from 2022 when its shares tanked 65% amid a tech selloff and just as the Facebook parent was pivoting to the metaverse.
Zuckerberg's relentless pursuit of the metaverse cost the company $13.7 billion in 2022. To cut costs, Meta laid off 11,000 people in November and announced a renewed push into AI in February.
The company has also rolled out new programs to diversify revenue streams: including the "Meta Verified" subscription service and the Threads microblog platform.
Meta shares closed 0.6% higher at $310.62 apiece on Monday.