Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) received a number of ratings updates from brokerages and research firms in the last week:

  • Facebook had its price target lowered by analysts at Goldman Sachs from $42.00 to $37.00. They now have a “buy” rating on the stock. They wrote, “Due to movements in the comp group share prices over the past few months, we are adjusting our P/FCF multiple to 65X from 80X and our EV/EBITDA multiple to 20X from 25X. As a result, we are lowering our 12 month price target on Facebook from $42 to $37 (equal weights of DCF, P/FCF, EV/EBITDA). Our earnings and revenue estimates remain unchanged. At $23, Facebook is trading at 13x our CY13 EV/EBITDA forecast, which compares to our comp group mean of 25X. With the next lockup ending soon, coupled with the market’s allergy to supply, we would expect the shares to remain volatile over the next few months. That said, we believe the significantly higher CPMs associated with its new advertising initiatives will help to drive uplift in overall CPMs over time.”
  • Facebook had its “buy” rating reaffirmed by analysts at Goldman Sachs.
  • Facebook had its price target lowered by analysts at Robert W. Baird from $37.00 to $32.00. They now have an “outperform” rating on the stock.
  • Facebook had its “buy” rating reaffirmed by analysts at Topeka Capital. They now have a $36.00 price target on the stock. They wrote, “This is a clear step towards what we think should be a formidable e-commerce platform that is, of course, socially based. This is also supportive of our thesis of significant unrealized monetization potential on the platform. E-commerce has proven to work well on mobile devices where, unlike advertising, there are zero monetization differences with desktop. An e-commerce platform could be worth a conservative $2 per share of incremental value to Facebook. E-Commerce and social search, combined, represents an incremental $9 per share of value to Facebook.”
  • Facebook had its “buy” rating reaffirmed by analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald. They now have a $26.00 price target on the stock. They wrote, “Facebook announced that starting today users can give their friends real gifts using ‘Gifts’. This is a meaningful pivot by the world’s largest social network into e-commerce, and it creates a brand new revenue stream that should show up in Facebook’s Payments segment over time. The offering will launch in the U.S. first. A back of the envelope analysis (considering the company is not disclosing any terms) would suggest that a 10% penetration of MAUs in NA, an average spend of $50/yr and a 10% revenue-share would yield nearly $100M of annualized revenue. This would imply ~2% incremental lift to revenue and ~4% incremental lift to EBITDA in FY:13 by our estimates, assuming virtually 100% incremental margin. Gifts alone may have a relatively small impact, but we expect many more innovations over time. With Facebook still early in the optimization/targeting/monetization phase, we find the stock attractive at current levels and reiterate our BUY rating.”
  • Facebook had its price target lowered by analysts at Oppenheimer from $41.00 to $27.00. They now have an “outperform” rating on the stock.

Facebook opened at 22.27 on Wednesday. Facebook has a 1-year low of $17.55 and a 1-year high of $45.00. The company has a market cap of $47.711 billion and a price-to-earnings ratio of 77.06.

Facebook, Inc. (Facebook) is engaged in building products to create utility for users, developers, and advertisers.