Can Facebook Live Up to Its Earnings and Growth Expectations?

By Chris Lange Updated Apr 27, 6:25PM EDT · Published Jul 29, 10:51AM EDT

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Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is scheduled to report its second-quarter financial results after the markets close Wednesday. There are consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters that call for $0.47 in earnings per share (EPS) on $3.99 billion in revenue. The same period from the previous year had $0.42 in EPS on $2.91 billion in revenue.

It has been no secret that Facebook stock has been on a meteoric rise. For a serious growth story and with its dominant position in social media set, it is not even deemed overly expensive by serious growth stock investor metrics. Still, Facebook’s valuation should start turning heads here on a relative basis.

One of the first things to consider is that this social media giant has recently passed Wal-Mart, JPMorgan, and even GE in terms of market cap. Facebook’s market cap is right around $272 billion, about $2 billion larger than the market cap of GE and about $12 billion higher than JPMorgan. Facebook’s market cap is now about $32 billion larger than Wal-Mart’s.

This incredibly fast-growing company remains the face of social media. Facebook has been grinding higher over the past year after a big run up in 2013 to early 2014, when the stock almost doubled. And the social media behemoth doesn’t look to be slowing down as analysts across Wall Street continue to recommend the stock and have moved price targets higher.

The Merrill Lynch team feels that, overall, investors will continue to migrate to what they call “high-quality” growth stocks, perhaps beginning to eschew momentum darlings that are probably way overpriced. The analysts point to the fact that Facebook has easy second-quarter comparisons to last year for this quarter and through the rest of 2015.

A few analysts chimed in on Facebook ahead of earnings:

S&P Equity Research reiterated a Buy rating.
Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated a Buy rating with a $100 price target.
Cowen reiterated a Buy rating and increased its price target to $110 from $94.
Raymond James reiterated an Outperform rating and raised its price target to $100 from $90.
SunTrust reiterated a Buy rating and raised its price target to $125 from $100.

Shares of Facebook were down 0.5% at $94.79 on Wednesday morning. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $100.65 and a 52-week trading range of $70.32 to $99.24.

Despite the strong performance within the past year, Facebook shares are down about 3%, and this dip could be seen as profit taking ahead of perhaps difficult expectations.

So far in 2015, Facebook is the second strongest component of the infamous FANG (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google). Year to date Facebook shares are up 22%, only beat out by Netflix which is up 119%.

About the Author Chris Lange →

Chris Lange is a writer for 24/7 Wall St., based in Houston. He has covered financial markets over the past decade with an emphasis on healthcare, tech, and IPOs. During this time, he has published thousands of articles with insightful analysis across these complex fields. Currently, Lange's focus is on military and geopolitical topics.

Lange's work has been quoted or mentioned in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today, MSN, Yahoo, The Verge, Vice, The Intelligencer, Quartz, Nasdaq, The Motley Fool, Fox Business, International Business Times, The Street, Seeking Alpha, Barron’s, Benzinga, and many other major publications.

A graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Lange majored in business with a particular focus on investments. He has previous experience in the banking industry and startups.