Jim Cramer said Wednesday he came away from Mark Zuckerberg’s guided tour of the metaverse even more convinced that Wall Street is underestimating Meta Platforms (META) and its struggling stock. “Buy Meta because I’ve seen the future,” Cramer said during the Investing Club’s “Morning Meeting,” a few hours before he sits down again with Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, for an extended interview that will air on “Mad Money.” Zuckerberg is betting big on the metaverse, pivoting the company formerly known as Facebook away from traditional social media and toward the emerging concept of interactive virtual worlds. Within a decade, Zuckerberg foresees about a billion people will spend time in the metaverse, which will be home to billions of dollars of digital commerce spending and create jobs for creators and developers alike. There are skeptics of the company’s planned transformation, which became public last year, although the internal groundwork was laid earlier . Critics question whether Meta’s decision to spend tens of billions of dollars to build out the software and hardware to power the metaverse will ultimately lead to the long-term vision Zuckerberg has touted. Shares of Meta are down about 53% year to date, as investors worry that competition from TikTok is weighing on daily active users on its core Instagram and Facebook platforms. The advertising market also faces uncertainties associated with Apple’s recent privacy changes and the overall macroeconomic environment. However, Cramer has spoken favorably about Zuckerberg’s metaverse strategy for months, comparing it to when the tech entrepreneur made the decision roughly a decade ago to make Facebook a mobile-first platform when the mobile ad market was still in its early days. Advertising is Facebook’s primary revenue source, but in 2012, there were concerns about whether huge sums of money could be made from mobile users. Zuckerberg was adamant that it would work , and it has. Cramer indicated Wednesday his confidence in Zuckerberg has only strengthened after being able to experience the metaverse firsthand. “I found it electric. I see trillions of dollars in money that could be made. I see him being much ahead of this,” said Cramer, who also believes Meta’s answer to TikTok, a feature on Instagram and Facebook called Reels, is gaining traction. “I think the sellers have not seen the future, and I have,” he added, referring to the people who have dumped Meta shares because they don’t believe in the metaverse. Cramer said he sees a range of potential use cases for the metaverse, and inside that virtual world, there would be a currency that can be used to make transactions similar to V-Bucks in the popular video game Fortnite. “You can do it for work. You can do it for play. You can do it with family that you can’t see otherwise. You can play cards. You could have a beautiful location to do work. You can use it for education. You can use it for travel. You can use it, obviously, for entertainment, and it becomes an alternate world.” (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long META. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
