Meta bull case increasingly playing out, Mizuho says

Investing.com -- Mizuho said in a note Tuesday that its bullish thesis on Meta Platforms is increasingly playing out, pointing to rapid adoption of its Muse AI agent ahead of the company's Connect event.

Analyst Lloyd Walmsley, who rates Meta Outperform with a $750 price target, said "the Meta bull case increasingly playing out," with Muse quickly becoming the No. 1 free app in the app store, reportedly 730,000 downloads in five days and 2.5 million cumulatively by Sept. 21.

Walmsley said Meta Connect, on Sept. 23-24, should move the Muse story "from app adoption to platform creation," with the likely headline being Muse on Meta's glasses, combining its AI agent with wearables in what he called the clearest consumer AI use case yet.

He expects the event to showcase the convergence of hardware, model, agent and commerce.

He highlighted Meta's new Connector Platform, opened to third-party developers on Sept. 18, as setting the stage for transaction-based monetization, potentially via a take rate on businesses wanting to reach Muse users.

Shopify has activated checkout within Muse, joining Stripe, while Amazon has blocked Muse, which Walmsley said validates its growing scale.

The analyst noted Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has signaled the model will evolve toward Meta taking a share of the value Muse creates, raising the potential to disintermediate Google search, online travel agents and e-commerce advertising.

He also flagged risks from possible competing products, but noted Meta trades at 22 times 2027 earnings, below Alphabet's 30 times at peak "Gemini mania."

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