Why Meta stock looks increasingly bullish after a brutal 2022: Analyst

For Meta (META) this year, the road ahead will focus on better execution with fewer employees, and maybe a higher stock price, argues RBC analyst Brad Erickson.

“We think they are making improvements in terms of targeting and measurement, and we think that is translating into incremental dollar growth and advertising,” Erickson said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above).

Meta is Erickson’s top pick from his sector coverage for 2023. The bullish call comes after a brutally challenging year for Meta as the economic slowdown weighed on corporate advertising spending.

CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg walks to lunch following a session at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 08, 2021 in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

And it wasn’t just the floundering ad market that posed problems for Meta. The overall macroeconomic climate – one that’s hammered all of Big Tech – also slammed the Facebook parent company.

“2022 was a relative disaster by almost any measure with the sector’s FY performance [and] valuation falling 56% and 53% respectively,” Erickson wrote in a Jan. 11 note about internet stocks. “Rising interest rates and broad-based inflationary pressures brought investor expectations even further back to Earth.”

Simultaneously, the company has been navigating its costly efforts to build itself out as the go-to metaverse name, having just changed its name from Facebook in 2021.

For the nine months ending Sept. 30, Meta’s sales were…

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