TLDR
- Bernstein reiterated an Outperform rating and $800 price target on META stock
- Meta is on track to surpass Google Search in advertising revenue in 2026
- META trades 28% below its 52-week high despite 27.7% revenue growth over the last 12 months
- Meta settled a teen safety lawsuit for up to $18 billion
- Meta released Muse Spark 1.3, its most advanced coding and agentic AI model to date
Meta Platforms (META) stock is trading at $592.85, up 2.47% on the day, as Bernstein SocGen Group stood by its Outperform rating and $800 price target on the stock.
Bernstein pointed to AI-driven advertising strength as a key reason for confidence in the name. The firm said Meta is on track to overtop Google Search in advertising revenue by the end of 2026.
Excluding ad revenues from products like Maps and Gmail, Meta may have already pulled level with Google Search, according to Bernstein.
Meta’s AI systems have to predict what users want to see, rather than responding to explicit search queries. The firm said this makes AI improvements in targeting and ad measurement especially valuable for Meta compared to search-based rivals.
Digital ad fundamentals are described as arguably the strongest they have ever been. Yet Meta stock and other digital ad names have struggled, the firm noted.
Bernstein said investors have punished Meta over high AI capital expenditure, uncertain returns on that spending, and questions about long-term growth. Despite 27.7% revenue growth over the past twelve months, the stock sits 28% below its 52-week high.
InvestingPro analysis suggests META remains undervalued at current levels.
Lawsuit Settlement Adds to the Picture
Meta recently settled a lawsuit over teen user safety, agreeing to pay up to $18 billion and make changes to its apps for younger users.
UBS reiterated a Buy rating with a $715 price target following the settlement. KeyBanc kept its Overweight rating at a $780 target, saying the deal brings clarity on product features and legal costs.
BofA Securities held its Buy rating with an $810 target after reports that Meta plans to launch a new AI agent called Hatch inside Instagram and WhatsApp.
Needham kept a Hold rating, flagging concerns over Meta’s broad push across multiple technology areas.
Muse Spark 1.3 Released
On the AI model front, Meta released Muse Spark 1.3 on September 2, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling it the company’s biggest improvement in coding and agentic work to date.
The model is available through Muse Code and Meta’s API, with open weights versions planned for the near future.
Muse Spark 1.3 scored 98.5 on the MRCR 256K-512K benchmark, the highest in its comparison group for long-context understanding.
It scored 75.4 on DeepSWE v1.1 and 88.8 on Terminal-Bench 2.1, matching GPT-5.6 on the latter benchmark.
In agent tests, the model scored 1754 on GDPVal-AA v2, compared to Opus’s 1824. On DeepSearchQA, it scored 89.4 versus GPT-5.6’s 93.0.
Meta’s market cap sits at $1.45 trillion. BofA’s $810 price target remains the highest among recently cited analyst calls.
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