Social Media giant Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has been an investor favorite for the past five years. Anyone who jumped on board back in 2012 has seen their shares rise nearly 700% and FB stock has already risen 59% since the beginning of this year. If you missed the Facebook train all those years ago, or even over the past few months, fear not because the engine has barely even started. I wouldn’t be surprised to see FB turn in triple digit gains over the next year as the firm cements its position at the top of the ever growing world of social media.

FB Is Poised to Sell

While Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has been credited for turning the retail space on its head over the past few years, social media, specifically Facebook, is changing the way people find new brands. As fellow InvestorPlace contributor Luke Lango pointed out, FB’s Instagram is becoming an integral part of any new brand’s advertising strategy. Instagram is the new word-of-mouth and more and more people are looking to their feed for product recommendations.

Facebook has developed Instagram into an effective selling machine. Now users can click directly on photos to buy items and swipe up to visit brand websites right from an Instagram Story. That means that Instagram is not only helping to shape a company’s image and drive awareness, but the platform is also converting sales too.

Monetization

The big reason to get excited about FB stock, though, is the firm’s untapped potential in both messaging and video. Facebook has recently been building out its video offerings with Watch, a new streaming service that gives users curated programming based on their own and their friends’ interests. Tailoring content to fit with users’ preferences is child’ s play for Facebook, which has been gathering data for years. Most are expecting Watch to quickly catch on, something that will likely lure in content creators and advertisers.

Then there’s messaging, a space where Facebook has such a wide moat it looks impossible for anyone to catch up. The firm currently operates the two most popular messaging services in the world- WhatsApp and Messenger. At the moment, neither of the two are generating any revenue for Facebook, but their eventual monetization will be a huge windfall for FB stock.

It’s also important to note that messaging and video aren’t the only sleeping giants in FB’s arsenal. The firm is also working on music streaming, virtual reality and even drones.

It’s Cheap

With a $171 price tag, FB stock doesn’t spring to mind first when you’re talking about cheap stocks. However, that valuation is actually relatively low when you look at Facebook’s growth potential and comparable companies.

Facebook is currently trading at 32 times its forecasted earnings- compare that to Twitter’s (NYSE:TWTR) price to forecasted earnings ratio of 54 and Amazon’s whopping 252 and you’re looking at a bargain. Have a look at price to earnings growth ratio, you’ll see a similar comparison. Fellow fangs AMZN and Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ:NFXL) offer PEG ratios of 9.10 and 7.45 respectively. Facebook, on the other hand, has a PEG ratio of just 1.4.

The Bottom Line

When you take into account the growth opportunities mentioned above, those figures make the stock look like a pretty cheap buy at the current levels. Not only that, but FB has no long-term debt. That means it has room to maneuver and that it is well-positioned to ride out any turbulence over the next few years.

FB bears say that the firm is losing ground to new entrants like SNAP Inc. (NYSE:SNAP), but I think those worries are over done. FB added more new users in one year than SNAP has in its entire existence. That’s a big deal because FB is already a developed social media site, so finding new users is no easy feat. Thanks to FB’s efforts to copy popular SNAP features, the firm has avoided losing its users to SnapChat and drawn in new users as well. Not only is FB fending off SNAP’s advances, but the firm is also laying the groundwork to beat Snapchat at its own game. FB aquired German video-editing firm Fayteq, a move that could help improve Instagram filters.

So, it doesn’t look like Facebook is going anywhere, Snapchat or not. Solid financial security coupled with a huge amount of growth potential makes FB stock worth considering regardless of the company’s past gains.

As of this writing, Laura Hoy was long FB, NFLX and AMZN