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KeyBanc analysts become the third sell-side analyst to raise the recommendation on Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) shares this week. The price target of $240 per share reflects a nearly 20% upside to yesterday’s close.
The decision to upgrade META to Overweight comes just one and two days after Morgan Stanley and Edward Jones analysts upgraded the stock, respectively.
Analysts now see Meta as a leaner business after the company announced the second big round of layoffs.
“With its latest reductions, Meta’s 2023 opex guidance has been reduced by ~10%. Coupled with CPMs showing signs of improvement (combo of product ramps, FX, and spend improvements), we believe operating margins should get to at least 31% by 2024. As a result, we now project 2023 and 2024 EPS of $10.57 and $13.39, respectively (6% and 9% above the Street, respectively),” the analysts wrote in an upgrade note.
Moreover, the analysts also argue that the ad market seems to be more stable now. As a result, they also upgraded DoubleVerify (NYSE:DV) with a price target of $30 per share.
“Our view is that companies with product cycles (DV, TTD) and a combination of expense discipline/operational improvement/controversy (META, GOOGL, PINS) stand best positioned to benefit from an eventual recovery. Stock performance from late 2007-2011 appears to have mirrored this with only a handful of stocks outperforming the NASDAQ (AMZN, BKNG, GOOGL) despite many public Internet companies at the time being exposed to comparable secular tailwinds,” analysts concluded.
Meta shares closed 2.2% higher yesterday and are up 68% year-to-date (YTD).
