Facebook price target raised to $195 from $190 at Piper Jaffray - InvestingChannel

Facebook price target raised to $195 from $190 at Piper Jaffray

Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson raised his price target for Facebook to $195 from $190 and maintains an Overweight rating on the shares following last night’s Q4 results. The stock in premarket trading is up 11%, or $17.06, to $167.48. The company slightly beat revenue and operating income for Q4 while daily and monthly active users came in consistent with consensus, Olson tells investors in a research note. The combination of monetization transitions, increased spending on content screening/security initiatives, and the potential for both users and advertisers to reduce their usage of Facebook’s various properties “were collectively not impactful enough to derail Q4 results,” contends the analyst. He believes investors “will be emboldened to take a more optimistic view” of Facebook shares in the “midst of what has been a tidal wave of negative news flow.”