Any way you look at it, technology remains king, and the Nasdaq continues to roar past the S&P 500 as investors pull money out of multinationals and look for stocks without huge currency headwinds. As of Friday, the Nasdaq was up 5.74% for the year, versus a paltry 2.24% for the S&P 500. While many tech stocks may just meet earnings estimates, two social media stocks could really surprise to the upside.
In a new research report, Deutsche Bank, like many others we cover on Wall Street, is very bullish on the social media group and are focused on the leading companies when they report. They are Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) and Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR).
No true challenger seems anywhere in sight for this the godfather of social media. The stock has been on fire for the past year and a half, and the social media behemoth does not look to be slowing down. The revenue change over the past year was an astounding 54.69%, and it comes in as a top Internet stock pick at many firms on Wall Street.
With Instagram, premium video and Graph Search capabilities, some analysts feel that the company can drive revenue growth even without a huge increase in advertising placement. The Deutsche Bank team thinks that investors sentiment is very positive, and that mobile advertising growth via different silos can be added this year, 2016 and beyond.
The analysts also point to the Dynamic Products Ads program that was launched in February as a newer silo of business for Facebook that could really to start to move the needle in terms of revenue in the second half of 2015. While the Deutsche Bank analysts concede they are not expecting meaningful upside to current estimates, other firms have been much more aggressive.
The Deutsche Bank price target for the stock is $90. The Thomson/First Call consensus price target is set higher at $92.77. The stock closed on Monday at $83.09. Facebook reports earnings on April 22.
Twitter has transformed from the stock that everybody hated to the one that everybody is starting to love. High multiple valuations, issues with the current CEO’s performance, and overall terrible negative market sentiment trampled the stock and actually made it a favorite target of short sellers, after fading quickly after a very quick one month post-IPO spike.
Twitter shareholders got the last laugh after a very strong fourth-quarter earnings report caught many of the short sellers by surprise in January and the stock took off. In fact, Twitter has retraced almost the entire sell-off and is back near highs printed last October.
The Deutsche Bank team points out that the stock is still very underowned relative to other large cap Internet stocks, and another major firm we cover offered a ton of reasons to buy Twitter.
The Deutsche Bank analysts acknowledge that advertising could generate $6 billion or more in revenues a few years out, but they also said that some of the upside has traded into the firm’s positive view from last year. That aside, they see numerous 2015 catalysts, including Instant Timeline and Video, and traffic flow from Google starting to head Twitter’s way in the second half of 2015.
Twitter remains one of Deutsche Bank’s top ideas, and its analysts would buy stock at current levels. Their price target is posted at $65, and the consensus target is $53.97. Shares closed Monday at $51.40.
Aggressive growth investors looking for solid alpha should consider one or both of these top social media leaders. They currently have zero competition in their specific realms, and none appears to be on the horizon.
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