META stock is a buy right now, Roth says

Following the company’s “Connect” conference, Roth MKM analyst Rohit Kulkarni thinks there is still money to be made on Meta Platforms (Meta Stock Quote, Chart, News, Analysts, Financials Nasdaq:META).

The analyst, who attended the conference, summarized the happenings.

“In a somewhat strange trading session yesterday, META shares fell to $287 during Zuck’s keynote, and have gone up +6% since then,” he noted. “Several positives came out of Meta’s conference, particularly a series of AI-driven products and innovations. Yet, given unhindered innovation velocity in the
Metaverse division, one might worry that losses in this segment might continue to stay elevated next year. Investors will be closely watching the 2024 OpEx outlook in the upcoming earnings release. We see the Street’s current ’24E assumption at $96bn as fairly conservative vs. ’23E organic OpEx estimated at approx. $85bn. We believe Meta’s ’24 spend outlook could bracket and/or come in lower than the current Street model.”

In a research update to clients September 28, Kulkarni maintained his “Buy” rating and one-year price target of $360.00 on META. Shares of META closed September 27 at $297.74.

The analyst thinks META will post EPS of $12.99 on revenue of $132.8-billion in fiscal 2023. He expect those numbers will improve to EPS of $16.49 on a topline of $149.7-billion the following year.