Nor is the growing threat from Apple Inc. as the main competitor, no angry pandemic could derail the train running out of revenue, which is Facebook Inc. And Snap Inc. and Twitter Inc. benefit from strong trading on Thursday.
Facebook FB,
On Wednesday, Wall Street estimates passed slightly, with a 33% increase in sales, to $ 28.07 billion, and earnings of $ 11.22 billion, or $ 3.88 per share. As expected, advertising accounted for a large majority of Facebook sales, but “other revenue,” such as Oculus VR headsets and Portal video chat devices, rose 156 percent to $ 885 million.
“[Facebook] The results in 4Q20 are higher, as [advertising] income increased + 31% y / y, helped by a [advertising] recovery and extended holiday season; [management] Quarter 1 is expected to remain stable or “accelerate modestly,” Cowen analyst John Blackledge said in a note late Wednesday that maintained superior performance and raised Facebook’s price target to $ 350 from $ 340 .
UBS analyst Eric Sheridan supported this view, raising his price target on Facebook to $ 350 from $ 330, citing “20 out of 20 on impulse” on Thursday.
“The engagement in the entire app family is very impressive,” Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said in a note on Wednesday that maintains a buy rating and a target price of $ 330. He highlighted 2.6 billion people active daily in the entire Facebook portfolio, compared to 3.3 billion people active monthly, suggesting that 79% use a Facebook service daily.
Facebook shares rose 1% to $ 274.55 on early Thursday afternoon trading. In the last year, they have increased by 31%, while the S&P 500 SPX index,
advanced by 16%.
The explosive holiday quarter seems to have benefited not only Facebook, but also its social media brothers. Evercore ISI analyst Kevin Rippey is waiting for Snap SNAP,
record an increase in revenue of between 65% and 70% when reporting results. 4th February. A strong fourth quarter, he said, is speeding Snap’s path to $ 10 billion in revenue growth by 2025.
Emphasizing its fate in Snap, Wells Fargo raised its target price to $ 62 from $ 44.
Snap shares rose 11% in early afternoon trading.
Meanwhile, KeyBanc Capital Markets analysts Justin Patterson and Sergio Sugura updated Twitter TWTR,
to overweight the sector and set a price target of $ 65 on Wednesday. They noted the “growing pain of the company coming to an end.”
Twitter shares rose 7.5% in early afternoon trading.
However, not everything is rosy for Facebook in 2021.
“We are seeing more and more Apple AAPL,
as one of our biggest competitors, ”Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned in a conference call with analysts following the earnings news. And CFO David Wehner warned that the company is facing “more significant winds targeting ads in 2021. This includes the impact of platform changes, especially [Apple] iOS 14, as well as the evolving regulatory landscape. ”
Read more: Facebook exceeds expectations, but warns of “cross currents” in 2021
Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Baird Equity Partners, took over the warning threads in a note late Wednesday, in which he assigned a superior performance rating and a price of $ 310.
“Management sounded cautious, as expected, about 2H21’s sustainable Y / Y growth companies and the potential negative impact of iOS 14 data / wind privacy,” Sebastian said in a note to customers. “Moreover, flattening user growth in a few key markets means that revenue growth will depend more on frequency of use / time spent and / or higher ad prices (increase in ARPU).”