‘Pretty inexpensive’: Morgan Stanley bullish on one Big Tech stock, says it looks cheap on some metrics
Shares of tech giant Meta Platforms are set to jump over 10% in the next 12 months, according to Brian Nowak, an equity analyst at Morgan Stanley. The U.S. investment bank has a price target of $375 on the stock — giving it potential upside of around 11.5% from its closing price of $336.31 on Nov. 14. Meta is among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks that several investors have been looking at favorably this year. The other stocks on the list are Alphabet , Amazon , Apple , Microsoft , Nvidia and Tesla . While Meta has been on investors’ radars, the stock was under pressure last month during a recent tech sell-off. Concerns on Meta had also emerged after Chief Financial Officer Susan Li’s comments on the advertising market in the fourth quarter. The company — which operates social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp – provided a wider revenue guidance range than normal, given the uncertainty of how the escalating conflict in the Middle East will affect ad spending, with Li explaining that on the company’s earnings call. Shares in Meta are up close to 180% year-to-date. META YTD mountain Year-to-date share price of Meta Going forward, Nowak remains overweight on the tech giant. “What we really liked about Meta is we think the market is still under appreciating the durability of their revenue growth in 2024 and 2025,” he told CNBC’s ” Street Signs Asia ” on Wednesday at the Morgan Stanley Asia-Pacific Summit 2023 in Singapore. “Engagement is growing, driven by Reels and Reel monetization. And as Meta is monetizing Reels at a higher rate, quarter over quarter is driving much faster than appreciated ad revenue growth, we think into 2024 and 2025,” he explained. Reels are full-screen vertical videos on the Instagram platform that Meta owns. Nowak also believes the tech giant’s strength comes from the discipline on its operating expenditure. “We think the free cash flow that comes through is just not appreciated and the stock is pretty inexpensive relative to free cash flow growth or earnings growth,” he explained. In a Nov. 2 note to investors, Morgan Stanley wrote that it expects Meta’s “reels + click to message + core” segments to translate to a $22 to $23 growth in earnings per share in 2025. This comes as Reels is still monetizing at an estimated rate of around 30% — which is the rate of “core” revenue that comes from segments such as Stories and Feed (two different features of the Instagram platform). It will also result in incremental Reels ad revenue of $11.4 billion in 2024 and $12.9 billion in 2025, the analysts led by Nowak detailed. “We expect growth to be driven by ad load, further improvements in matching/attribution and performance-driven pricing in the auction market,” they said adding that these levels of Reel monetization may prove conservative by 2025 given the ramp to date and positive advertiser trends. Meanwhile, they expect Meta’s click to message ad segment to register 20% and 16% year-on-year growth in 2024 and 2025 —to hit $2.4 billion and $2.3 billion, respectively. This follows new advertiser adoption, new ad formats, and AI-based innovation, the analysts said. — CNBC’s Isabella Lok contributed to this report.
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