Not the growing threat from Apple Inc. as a major competitor, or a raging pandemic, the revenue-seeking train that Facebook Inc. is, do not let derailed. Snap Inc. and Twitter Inc. finds strong advantage on Thursday.
Facebook FB,
On Wednesday, Wall Street estimates rose 33%, to $ 28.07 billion, and earnings of $ 11.22 billion, or $ 3.88 per share. As expected, advertising accounted for the vast majority of Facebook’s sales, but ‘other revenue’ such as Oculus VR headsets and Portal video chat devices rose 156% to $ 885 million.
‘[Facebook] 4Q20 results beat across the board, as [advertising] revenue increased + 31% year-on-year, aided by a [advertising] recovery and extended Holiday Season; [management] expects 1Q to remain stable or “accelerate modestly,” Cowen analyst John Blackledge said in a comment late Wednesday that he had outperformed and raised Facebook’s price target to $ 350 from $ 340.
UBS analyst Eric Sheridan secondsed the opinion, raising his price target on Facebook to $ 350 from $ 330, calling it a ’20 with momentum ‘in a comment on Thursday.
“Involvement in the entire family of programs is very impressive,” Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said Wednesday in a note that maintains a $ 330 buy-in and price target. He highlighted 2.6 billion daily active people in the entire Facebook portfolio versus 3.3 billion active people per month, indicating that 79% use a Facebook service daily.
Facebook shares rose 1% to $ 274.55 on Thursday. In the past year, they have risen by 31%, while the S&P 500 index SPX,
advanced by 16%.
It seems the blowing holiday has not only benefited Facebook but also its brothers on social media. Evercore ISI analyst Kevin Rippey expects Snap SNAP,
to achieve a revenue growth of between 65% and 70% when reporting the results. February 4th. A strong fourth quarter, he said, will accelerate Snap’s path to more than $ 10 billion in revenue by 2025.
Wells Fargo highlighted its fate in Snap and raised its price target from $ 44 to $ 62.
Snap shares rose 11% in early afternoon trading.
Meanwhile, Justin Patterson and Sergio Sugura, analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets, upgraded Twitter TWTR,
to overweight sector weight and set a price target of $ 65 in a note to customers Wednesday. They noted that the company is ‘growing pains towards the end’.
Twitter shares rose 7.5% in early afternoon trading.
Still, not everything is rosy because Facebook is in 2021.
‘We’re seeing Apple AAPL increasingly,
as one of our biggest competitors, ”Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned in a phone conversation with analysts following the earnings news. And CFO David Wehner warned that the company’s facing more significant headwinds in 2021. This includes the impact of platform changes, especially [Apple] iOS 14, as well as the evolving regulatory landscape. ”
Read more: Facebook beats expectations, but warns of ‘cross-currents’ in 2021
Baird Equity Partners analyst Colin Sebastian noted the threads of the warnings late in the afternoon in a note awarding a better performance score and $ 310 price target.
“Management, as expected, sounded cautious about difficult Y / Y growth competitions in 2H21, and the potential negative impact of data privacy / iOS headwinds,” Sebastian said in a comment to clients. “In addition, the flattening of user growth in some key markets means that revenue growth will be more dependent on usage frequency / time spent and / or higher advertising prices (increasing ARPU).”