Facebook (FB) Price Target Raised to $92 at Sterne Agee CRT Following Q1

Sterne Agee CRT analyst Arvind Bhatia reiterated a Buy rating and boosted his price target on Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) to $92.00 (from $85.00) following Q1 results, noting FX headwinds masked upside. The analyst also notes strong engagement and sees a long runway for growth.

Bhatia commented, "1Q’15 was essentially in line but user metrics, including reach and engagement, exceeded expectations. Excluding the impact of FX (which was worse than expected), revenue would have been ahead of consensus. We continue to believe very few companies in the world today have the monetization opportunity ahead that Facebook does. FB’s user base of 1.44B combined with WhatsApp’s 800M, FB Messenger’s 600M and Instagram’s more than 300M users, provide a long runway for growth and multiple ways to monetize. Video on Facebook continues to grow at a very solid pace, with 4B video views a day in 1Q, up sequentially from 3B video views a day. Raising target to $92 (from $85) as we shift our forward EV-EBITDA multiple of 16x by one year to 2017."

The firm is reducing FY15 Revenue / Adjusted EBITDA estimates to $16.4B / $9.53B from $17.0B / $10.09B. They are reducing our FY16 Revenue / Adjusted EBITDA estimates to $20.27B / $11.81B from $20.74B / $12.61B.

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Facebook click here. For more ratings news on Facebook click here.

Shares of Facebook closed at $84.63 yesterday.

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