Why ByteDance is a Bargain

What’s the cheapest stock around right now? That has to be ByteDance, the privately owned Chinese tech giant that owns TikTok. As we reported today, ByteDance lifted its first-half revenue about 35% to $73 billion, which means it is now about as big as Facebook owner Meta Platforms but growing faster. In the first half, Meta’s revenue increased 25% to $75.5 billion. 

And yet Meta has a market capitalization of $1.4 trillion while ByteDance’s valuation on the secondary market for private stocks is about $250 billion, according to CapLight. That’s quite a gap. If you assume ByteDance maintains the first-half growth rate in the second half, it should generate revenue of around $150 billion in 2024. That implies the company is trading at 1.7 times this year’s revenue—the kind of multiple usually awarded to a business that isn’t growing. Meta, in comparison, is trading at around 8.7 times estimated 2024 revenue, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.