Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) shares climbed on Thursday as major Wall Street analysts weighed in on its standout fourth-quarter report. The overarching theme was a blue-sky scenario in which massive AI spending is rewarded with accelerated growth.
- META stock is climbing. See the chart and price action here.
Meta Analysts
- BofA Securities, Justin Post: Reiterated Buy, Price Target $885 (Up from $810)
- Rosenblatt Securities, Barton Crockett: Maintained Buy, Price Target $1,144 (Up from $1,117)
- Wedbush, Scott Devitt: Maintained Outperform, Price Target $900 (Up from $880)
- JPMorgan, Doug Anmuth: Maintained Overweight, Price Target $825 (Up from $800)
- KeyBanc Capital, Justin Patterson: Maintained Overweight, Price Target $855 (Up from $835)
- Goldman Sachs, Eric Sheridan: Reiterated Buy, Price Target $835 (Up from $815)
- Cantor Fitzgerald, Deepak Mathivanan: Reiterated Overweight / Top Pick, Price Target $860 (Up from $750)
BofA Securities: Meta’s results are a proof point for the benefits of AI in its core ad business, according to BofA.
Post highlighted that Meta can self-fund its massive investments while still maintaining positive free cash flow.
Rosenblatt: Crockett got into the nitty-gritty of Meta’s massive $100 billion spending hike (capex + opex). He estimates it is delivering a ~50% pretax return due to new “ultra-high contribution margin revenues.”
“The hockey stick in capex and opex growth has to come to an end… Meta in no way we believe is looking for negative FCF,” the analyst said.
The firm also noted that output per software engineer has increased by 30% since early 2025, driven by agentic coding.
Wedbush: Devitt highlighted Meta’s Q1 revenue guidance as fully debunking the narrative of a slowdown and said that significant upside still remains from the Meta AI assistant through business agents and automated advertiser tools.
JPMorgan: Anmuth pointed to outsized Q1 revenue growth putting Meta back on track to justify its aggressive investment levels. To scale even quicker, Meta is significantly increasing 3rd-party cloud spend, partnering with hyperscalers and neoclouds.
KeyBanc: In a report titled “AI Has Returns and the Sky Is Blue,” KeyBanc described Meta’s results as a best-case scenario where massive revenue growth more than offsets ballooning expenses.
The firm noted that, excluding the pandemic, 2026 is projected to see the highest revenue growth rate for Meta since 2019.
Goldman Sachs: Meta’s business is finally starting to show the scaling effects of AI on content recommendation. This is creating a positive feedback loop for engagement.
The public release of the next foundational model from the Meta Superintelligence Group is a major catalyst for 2026.
Cantor Fitzgerald: Meta has one of the highest monetization rates for compute in the AI industry.
Meta doubling its GPUs and adopting sequence-learning architectures has led to immediate gains in Facebook ad clicks (+3.5%) and Instagram conversions (>1%).
Meta Market Reaction
Investors seemed as pleased as Wall Street was with Meta’s results, pushing the stock 9.8% higher on heavy volume to trade at $734.39 Thursday afternoon, according to Benzinga Pro.
Image: Shutterstock
Recent Comments