META rates a BUY at $893 with 38% upside after shares dropped 8% despite Q1 EPS crushing consensus by 57%.
Alphabet guides $175-185B in 2026 capex versus Meta's $145B, while Pinterest's 631 million MAUs highlight Meta's dominant scale advantage.
Reality Labs bled $4 billion in Q1 operating losses, yet even the bear case projects META reaching $765, which would represent an 18% gain.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Meta didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Meta has become the poster child for the hyperscaler AI spending race. 2026 has been a tug of war between blockbuster earnings and rising anxiety about capex translation into shareholder returns. Our proprietary model sees material upside from here.
Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is $892.70 over the next 12 months, implying 38.19% upside from $646.01. The recommendation is a buy with high confidence (90%).
Meta is down 1.96% year to date and 7.6% over the past year, sitting 4% below its 52-week high of $793.65.
Q1 2026 delivered revenue of $56.31 billion growing 33.08% year over year and EPS of $10.44 beating consensus by 56.79%, the fifth straight beat. Yet shares fell 8.55% as investors digested a raised full-year capex range of $125 to $145 billion.
A Benzinga report flagged a potential $10 billion AI deal with Anthropic, and JPMorgan described Meta's aggressive Model API pricing as "the first significant step toward monetizing its substantial AI investments beyond advertising."
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Meta didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Bulls argue advertising funds AI expansion. Q1 ad impressions rose 19% YoY and price per ad rose 12%, with Family of Apps daily active people at 3.56 billion. Zuckerberg framed the strategy plainly: "Our biggest milestone so far this year has been the release of our Muse family of models."
UBS carries a Buy with a $766 target, and analyst coverage skews 57 Buy ratings versus 6 Holds and zero Sells. Our bull case pegs META at $1,015.75, a 57.23% return.
The bear case centers on capex return on investment. FY25 capex hit $72.22 billion and 2026 guidance stretches to $145 billion. Reality Labs continues to bleed with a $4.03 billion Q1 operating loss. Regulatory overhang includes 2026 youth-related trials that could produce material judgments.
Source: Yahoo Finance Top News — This article was automatically imported from the source. Read full article at original source →
