Piper Jaffray Believes Facebook's Mobile Success in Unappreciated

Piper Jaffray published a research report on Facebook

that commented on the company's $2 billion opportunity in the mobile business. In the report, Piper Jaffray wrote, "We believe Facebook's early success in mobile has gone largely unappreciated by investors. Facebook's success in mobile in the first month of implementation ($180 million run-rate as of June) suggests that the company is already one of the biggest players in mobile advertising. We believe that the bigger picture for mobile is bright and believe that more that $15 billion in ad spend could be shifting into mobile over the next five years in the US alone. We believe that globally, the mobile opportunity for Facebook could be around $2 billion annually, which we do not believe is fully reflected in Street models. This implies that mobile could be 15-20% of Facebook revenue in 2015 (vs. a run-rate of ~2% in 2012), compared to ~11% of Google revenue being mobile in 2012." Piper Jaffray maintained its Overweight rating and $41 price target on Facebook, which closed Friday at $18.06.