Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) price on Friday, March 17, fall -4.55% below its previous day’s close as a downside momentum from buyers pushed the stock’s value to $195.61.
A look at the stock’s price movement, the close in the last trading session was $204.93, moving within a range at $195.43 and $201.90. The beta value (5-Year monthly) was 1.22 while the PE ratio in trailing twelve months stood at 23.40. Turning to its 52-week performance, $236.86 and $88.09 were the 52-week high and 52-week low respectively. Overall, META moved 10.41% over the past month.
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Meta Platforms Inc.’s market cap currently stands at around $513.31 billion, with investors looking forward to this quarter’s earnings report slated for Apr 25, 2023 – May 01, 2023. Analysts project the company’s earnings per share (EPS) to be $2, which has seen fiscal year 2023 EPS growth forecast to increase to $9.53 and about $11.5 for fiscal year 2024. Per the data, EPS growth is expected to be 10.90% for 2023 and 20.70% for the next financial year.
Analysts have a consensus estimate of $27.59 billion for the company’s revenue for the quarter, with a low and high estimate of $26.76 billion and $28.57 billion respectively. The average forecast suggests down to a -1.10% growth in sales growth compared to quarterly growth in the same period last fiscal year. Wall Street analysts have also projected the company’s year-on-year revenue for 2023 to grow to $122.44 billion, representing a 5.00% jump on that reported in the last financial year.
Revisions could be used as tool to get short term price movement insight, and for the company that in the past seven days was no upward and no downward review(s). Turning to the stock’s technical picture we see that short term indicators suggest on average that META is a 100% Buy. On the other hand, the stock is on average a 100% Buy as suggested by medium term indicators while long term indicators are putting the stock in 50% Buy category.
55 analyst(s) have given their forecast ratings for the stock on a scale of 1.00-5.00 for a strong buy to strong sell recommendation. A total of 13 analyst(s) rate the stock as a Hold, 32 recommend META as a Buy and 5 give it an Overweight rating. Meanwhile, 1 analyst(s) rate the stock as Underweight and 4 say it is a Sell. As such, the average rating for the stock is Overweight which could provide an opportunity for investors keen on increasing their holdings of the company’s stock.
The technical evaluation for the stock shows the PEG ratio is 6.44, with META’s current price about 8.62% and 19.28% off the 20-day and 50-day simple moving averages respectively. The Relative Strength Index (RSI, 14) currently prints 64.61, while 7-day volatility ratio is 4.23% and 3.23% in the 30-day chart. Further, Meta Platforms Inc. (META) has a beta value of 1.16, and an average true range (ATR) of 7.35. Analysts have given the company’s stock an average 52-week price target of $216.30, forecast between a low of $80.00 and high of $305.00. Looking at the price targets, the low is 59.1% off current price level while to achieve the yearly target high, price needs to move -55.92%. Nonetheless, investors will most likely welcome a -13.75% jump to $222.50 which is the analysts’ median price.
In the market, a comparison of Meta Platforms Inc. (META) and its peers suggest the former has performed considerably weaker. Data shows META’s intraday price has changed -4.55% in last session and -3.94% over the past year. Comparatively, Apple Inc. (AAPL) has moved -0.55% on the day and only -2.88% in the past 12 months. Looking at another peer, we see that Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) price has gained 1.17% on the day. However, the stock is -5.08% off its price a year ago. Moreover, Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) is also up 1.38% in trading on the day while keeping a a downtrend of -23.36% over the past year. If we look at the PE ratio, we find that Meta Platforms Inc.’s ratio stands at 23.40 compared to Apple Inc.’s 26.33 and Microsoft Corporation’s 31.07. Elsewhere, the overall performance for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial shows that the indexes are down -1.10% and -1.19% respectively in the last trading.
If we refocus on Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META), historical trading data shows that trading volumes averaged 34.62 million over the past 10 days and 31.99 million over the past 3 months. The company’s latest data on shares outstanding shows there are 2.64 billion shares.
The 0.25% of Meta Platforms Inc.’s shares are in the hands of company insiders while institutional holders own 75.20% of the company’s shares. Also important is the data on short interest which shows that short shares stood at 26.81 million on Jan 30, 2023, giving us a short ratio of 0.98. The data shows that as of Jan 30, 2023 short interest in Meta Platforms Inc. (META) stood at 1.03% of shares outstanding, with shares short falling to 29.29 million registered in Dec 29, 2022. Current price change has pushed the stock 62.55% YTD, which shows the potential for further growth is there. It is this reason that could see investor optimism for the META stock continues to rise going into the next quarter.
