Meta (META) investors saw the stock gaining +24.99% the last 5 days, which means it sits at +49.54% YTD.
Let's go through the news around Meta this week together.
LEGEND: Positive News | Neutral News | Negative News
Meta released their Q4 2022 earnings this week - and investors loved what they heard.
Highlights
- Revenue was $32.17B (beat)
- EPS was $1.76 (miss)
- Family of Apps (Daily Active People) was 2.96B (+5% YoY)
- Family of Apps (Monthly Active People) was 3.74B (+4% YoY)
- $40 Billion share buyback authorization
- Revenue guidance for Q1 2023 of $26-$28.5B (in-line)
- FY 2023 total expenses $89-$95B (down from $94-$100B)
- FY 2023 capital expenditures $30-$33B (down from $34-$37B)
This report resulted in around $100B of market cap value being added to Meta the following day - quite mind blowing - and Wall St. clearly liked the report!
The main takeaways here is that guidance was not as bad as feared, they will be lowering their investments and expenses (means more free cash flow) and they authorized a monster $40B share buyback to return value to shareholders.
The stock is now up more than 100% from its lows just a few months ago.
Meta got the green light from a judge (ruling against the FTC) to buy Within Unlimited - a VR company.
This deal has been in limbo due to the FTC having an issue with it - but that cloud has passed and Meta won this battle.
The FTC had an issue with competition regarding this deal, since it would continue to help Meta strengthen their position when it comes to VR, but the Judge felt this was not a good enough reason to block the deal.
| RATING | PRICE TARGET | FIRM |
| Buy | $200 | LightShed Partners |
| Overweight | $215 | Piper Sandler |
| Outperform | $220 | Wolfe Research |
| Outperform | $275 | Evercore ISI Group |
| Buy | $210 | Stifel |
| Outperform | $210 | Bernstein |
| Outperform | $220 | Raymond James |
| Buy | $220 | B of A Securities |
| Overweight | $260 | Barclays |
| Buy | $235 | UBS |
| Overweight | $225 | JP Morgan |
| Buy | $210 | Mizuho |
| Buy | $220 | Rosenblatt |
| Outperform | $220 | Credit Suisse |
| Outperform | $205 | Baird |
| Equal-Weight | $190 | Morgan Stanley |
| Outperform | $220 | Oppenheimer |
| Market Outperform | $210 | JMP Securities |
| Buy | $220 | Canaccord Genuity |
| Overweight | $250 | Wells Fargo |
| Buy | $215 | Truist Securities |
| Market Perform | $175 | Cowen & Co. |
| Positive | $225 | Susquehanna |
| Buy | $225 | Jefferies |
| Buy | $210 | Guggenheim |
| Outperform | $225 | RBC Capital |
| Buy | $200 | Deutsche Bank |
| Reduce | $110 | HSBC |
| Buy | $228 | Citigroup |
We look forward to spending a few minutes with you next Sunday for some new Meta news!
Disclosure: I am a Meta Platforms (META) shareholder at the time of publishing.
