Veteran fund manager turns heads with new Meta Platforms stock price target
Veteran fund manager turns heads with new Meta Platforms stock price target originally appeared on TheStreet.
On any given day, nearly half the world is on Meta Platforms (META) .
The parent of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads and WhatsApp, Meta has dramatically changed the way we live — for better or worse.
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The Menlo Park, Calif., social media giant is moving aggressively with artificial intelligence into areas that some people find just a bit spooky.
“Over the last few months, we’ve begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves, and the improvement is slow for now but undeniable,” Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said during the second-quarter earnings call.
“And developing superintelligence, which we define as AI that surpasses human intelligence in every way, we think is now in sight.”
To build this future, Zuckerberg said the company had set up Meta Superintelligence Labs, “which includes our foundations, product, and fair teams as well as a new lab that is focused on developing the next generation of our models.”
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees AI ‘efficiency and gains across our ad system.’
The company seems to be on the right track. Meta Platforms handily beat Wall Street’s quarterly forecasts and the stock is up nearly 52% this year.
Zuckerberg said the quarter’s strong performance stemmed largely from “AI unlocking greater efficiency and gains across our ad system.”
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Chris Versace, TheStreet Pro portfolio’s lead manager, liked what he heard from Zuck & Co. and boosted his price target for Meta shares to $850 from $725.
“The hike in our target reflects a combination of a few factors, including the company’s still expanding reach, advertising gains, and improving monetization efforts,” he said.
With trade tensions appearing to cool as the Trump administration announces deals and other conversations are extended, Versace said, “the reduced uncertainty tied to an economy that is still expanding should foster more normalized advertising spend.”
“In that environment, we continue to see Meta benefiting, especially as advertisers continue to shift increasingly toward digital platforms,” he said. “They also want to tap the 3.48 billion in daily active people across all of Meta’s platforms vs. 3.27 billion at the end of June 2024.”
While many were in awe of the company’s impressive top- and bottom-line beats, Versace said the year-over-year five-percentage-point improvement in its consolidated operating margin caught his eye.
“We should see further improvement in the second half of 2025, but higher expenses will be a headwind as Meta invests further in AI capacity and talent,” he noted.
“However, we see this as another instance of the company investing today to drive its business and profits higher in the coming quarters.”
The future ain’t gonna come cheap.
Meta, Amazon (AMZN) , Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) are set to spend as much as a cumulative $364 billion in their respective 2025 fiscal years, up from their prior estimates of around $325 billion.
Meta narrowed its 2025 capital-spending outlook to a range of $66 billion to $72 billion, up $30 billion year over year at the midpoint, Versace said.
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Several investment firms also noted Meta’s capital expenditures, including Scotiabank, which raised its price target on the company’s shares to $685 from $675 and affirmed a sector-perform rating on the shares.
Meta posted its largest beat in several years, and the revenue comparison in fiscal Q1 2026 against the year-earlier period looks “much easier,” the firm said, according to The Fly.
However, the firm said it remains on the sidelines until it sees the company progress on profiting from its higher capital expenditures while also outpacing the hit to earnings.
Doug Kass, a longtime hedge-fund manager and TheStreet Pro contributor, picked up on the capex issue in a lengthy comment on X.
“META has burned through $30 billion in the last two quarters,” he wrote. “Cash is now down to $12 billion” and “the capital and operating expense are now becoming a burden – nearly all of depreciation schedules [are] an absolute joke.”
Kass called the amount of capital spending “ludicrous … in part because of the accounting gimmicks that hide its true cost.
“At some point this will start getting into the numbers, even with the gimmicks,” he said. “And I still do not know where all the space, power, water, and even ancillary equipment will be found for all of this. There is only so much stuff the air conditioning manufacturers can make!”
Kass cited Amazon’s latest earnings report, noting that “the capital expense is starting to bite and hit the numbers.”
“Margins at [Amazon Web Services] are finally starting to feel it, and they disappointed,” he added. “Growth was nothing to write home about either. That is why the stock is selling off.”
Related: Veteran fund manager who forecast S&P 500 crash unveils surprising update
Veteran fund manager turns heads with new Meta Platforms stock price target first appeared on TheStreet on Aug 3, 2025
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Aug 3, 2025, where it first appeared.
