BTIG Upgrades Facebook (FB) to Buy, "Not having a BUY on Facebook has clearly been a mistake in 2017"

BTIG upgraded Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) from Neutral to Buy with a price target of $175.00.

Analyst Rich Greenfield comments (emphasis ours) "In the past week, we have begun to notice meaningful changes within Facebook's video tab on mobile devices. The focus on live content has disappeared and Facebook has begun to showcase better (and more targeted) video content using its algorithm. We are now seeing content from the past several days that we have not yet watched including content from friends/family we follow on Facebook, professional content producers we follow (such as CNN, Last Week Tonight, Vice) and some pure recommended content leveraging what we are interested in; all of which appears to be sorted by the same algorithm Facebook uses within the core newsfeed. We have seen almost NO live content within our feed, a tremendous improvement from what we have been seeing in recent months (the only highlighted live content we have noticed is when yesterday's Congressional hearing was happening)."

Speaking to Instagram Greenfield comments "Instagram Stories has essentially removed the pressure from having to post great pictures to Instagram that generate significant likes. With Instagram Stories, users can post anything knowing it will disappear in 24 hours and even more importantly, nobody will know how many likes a piece of content has received. The end result has been far more organic content uploaded to Instagram, which increases engagement from followers. Instagram Stories has just begun to rollout monetization through ad units that run between stories."

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 $139.94 yesterday.

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