FANG Stocks: Definition, Companies, Performance, and How to Invest

What Are FANG Stocks?

In finance, the acronym "FANG" refers to the stocks of four prominent American technology companies: Meta (META) (formerly Facebook), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX), and Alphabet/Google (GOOG). FANG stocks are famous for the impressive growth they have shown in recent years, with each member more than doubling over the past five years.

In 2017, the company Apple (AAPL) was also added by some analysts, resulting in the new acronym "FAANG."

Understanding FANG Stocks

The term "FANG stocks" was originally coined by The Street's Bob Lang and later popularized by Jim Cramer on his CNBC TV show Mad Money. It is now widely used by market commentators and analysts. The stocks referred to by the acronym are all well-known and richly-valued technology companies that trade on the NASDAQ exchange, a collection of approximately 3,300 American technology companies. Many other companies included in the NASDAQ exchange are also viewed as growth investments, although very few have matched the impressive growth of the FANG stocks in recent years.

Despite their common reputation as successful growth companies, the business models of the FANG stocks are distinct.

Facebook (Meta)

Facebook, for example, is the world’s preeminent social networking platform. With a monthly user-base of more than 2.85 billion people as of April. 2021, Meta can claim over 35% of the world's population as its customers. To monetize this extraordinary user base, Facebook sells ads that are targeted based on users’ personal preferences and usage patterns.

Amazon

Amazon, meanwhile, is a leading business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce platform that uses leading-edge cloud computing and data analytics technologies to sell a retail catalog. Although Amazon initially pioneered the sale of books online, books now represent only about one-third of their overall product catalog. In 2020, the company had sold products to over 300 million active customers in the U.S. alone, with half of those customers opting to subscribe to its paid membership service, Amazon Prime.

Netflix

Netflix is also known for its impressive customer growth. An online entertainment streaming service specializing in movies and television shows, the company's subscriber base has grown exponentially in recent years, from 22 million in 2011 to more than 209 million in 2020. To compete with new entrants to the streaming market, Netflix has also begun aggressively producing its own exclusive content, moving beyond its traditional role as a content aggregator to a major content producer in its own right.

Google (Alphabet)

Alphabet has leveraged its core expertise as the world’s foremost search engine, developing a highly profitable online advertising business while driving user retention through popular web applications such as YouTube, Google Docs, and Google Maps. The company receives an average of over 60,000 search requests every second of every day, and its mobile operating system, Android, has gained an estimated 75% share of the global smartphone market.

FANG Stock Performance

With these impressive facts in mind, it is no wonder why investors have been enthusiastic about the FANG stocks' business prospects. In recent years, this enthusiasm has been supported by the companies' financial performance, which has caused substantial increases in their respective stock prices.

In the trailing twelve months (TTM) as of August 2021, for example, Meta has reported revenues of over $104 billion, and net income of over $39 billion. Amazon, meanwhile, showed revenue of an astounding $443 billion, producing a net income of $29 billion. Over the past five years, these two companies’ stock prices increased by roughly 191% and 335%, respectively.

Netflix and Google have also shown strong TTM performance, with Netflix posting revenues of over $27 billion and net income of over $4.3 billion. Google, for its part, generated $220 billion in revenues along with nearly $62 billion in net income. Buoyed by these earnings, Netflix’s stock rose by 480% in the past five years, while Google's rose by about 276% over the same timeframe.

How to Invest in the FANG Stocks

Since there are only a handful of stocks in the FANG universe, it is relatively easy for investors to trade these names directly with their broker, especially now that many brokers offer zero-commission trading.

There are currently no ETFs that hold just the FANG (or FAANG) stocks. Instead, investors looking for ETFs that have heavy weightings of these could look to tech-heavy ETFs such as those that track the Nasdaq 100.