Morgan Stanley Lifts Facebook’s PT On New Features

Morgan Stanley raised Facebook’s (FB) price target to $295 (16.8% upside potential) from $285 citing strong user engagement of new features like Reels, Instagram Shopping and Facebook Marketplace. The analyst reiterated his Buy rating on the stock.

In the latest AlphaWise survey conducted by Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak, 34% of Americans use Facebook’s Instagram Reels, while 28% use Instagram Shopping on a monthly basis. The survey also revealed that 15% of participants use Facebook Marketplace daily and 56% use it monthly.

He said “We show how these products could add ~$3bn (~4%) to our ’21 growth forecasts from US monetization alone, giving us higher confidence in our ~23% ’21 revenue growth, which may prove conservative given these products’ potential. At the very least, this speaks to how FB’s multi-year revenue runway remains long.”

Recently, during the Facebook Connect event on Sept. 16, the social media company unveiled the next generation of the Oculus Quest Virtual Reality (VR) headset and new smart glasses in collaboration with Ray-Ban. The company also announced several longer-term projects using VR/ AR (Augmented Reality) technology. (See FB stock analysis on TipRanks).

Currently, the Street has a bullish outlook on the stock. The Strong Buy analyst consensus is based on 31 Buys, 4 Holds, and 1 Sell. The average analyst price target of $294.63 implies upside potential of 16.7% to current levels, with shares gaining 23% year-to-date.