In a report published Friday, Oppenheimer’s Jason Helfstein writes that there has been a rotation out of secular growth stocks and into industrial and financial stocks post-election. The analyst argues that despite the recent selloff in tech there’s value in ‘FANG’ names, namely Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Google-parent Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG,GOOGL), with the first two as the most appealing at current levels.
Helfstein points out that Facebook’s potential positive catalysts include faster than expected ad monetization driven by “Video First”, a strategy by FB focused on taking as much market share as possible from YouTube over the next five years, Instagram engagement and Dynamic Product Ads. As for Seattle-based Amazon, besides the fact that economic forecasts are signaling another strong holiday season for US retailers, including Amazon, the analyst said he also expects stable AWS cloud computing service pricing which should continue to drive solid top-line growth and margin expansion for the e-commerce giant.
Price Action
On Thursday, Amazon.com, Inc. printed a lower than average trading volume with the issue trading 3.54M shares, compared to the average volume of 3.84M. The stock began trading at $781.73 to finish the session more than 5 points lower from the prior days close of $785.33. On an intraday basis it got as low as $773.12 and as high as $781.75.
Meanwhile, shares of Facebook dropped 0.52% to close at $120.84. Shares have declined 8.66% in the last 4 weeks and 2.46% in the past three months. Over the past 5 trading sessions the stock has gained 3.87%.
The $348.28 billion Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has a median Street price target of $155 with a high target of $185. Currently there are 35 analysts that rate Facebook’s stock a ‘Buy’, 3 rate it a ‘Hold’. One analyst rates it a ‘Sell’.
FB is up 14.28% year-over-year as of the close of trading on Thursday. Year-to-date the name has gained nearly 16%.
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