Oppenheimer Maintains Outperform Rating on Facebook Following Zuckerberg Interview

Oppenheimer published a research report on Facebook FB after CEO Mark Zuckerberg's first post-IPO interview and Apple's AAPL iPhone 5 announcement. In the report, Oppenheimer wrote, "Zuckerberg believes people misunderstand FB's mobile opportunity. CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains that the drop in the stock price could be due to investors misunderstanding the company's mobile opportunity. Six months ago there was not a single ad on mobile, and today the company has numerous ad products. Important aspects of mobile: 1) more potential users--more phones than computers; 2) user engagement is higher--two times more likely to be a daily user and the number of stories consumed has doubled since launch of new mobile app; and 3) FB likely will make more money on mobile than desktop--desktop display product was a stand-alone effort (albeit a multi-billion dollar business), whereas mobile is integrated, with ads performing better--Sponsored Stories have higher CPC and CTR. CEO admits that focus on HTML 5 was probably biggest mistake in company's history, but coming out of that now. FB published native app on iOS as quickly as possible, but more changes are to come. Android app is coming "hopefully soon." This is the driver of the previously comment on the number of stories consumed." Oppenheimer maintained its Outperform rating on Facebook, which is currently trading up 6.43 percent from Tuesday's $19.43 closing price.