JPMorgan's Anmuth: Facebook Worth $136 Now

• Facebook Inc FB shares are down 9 percent since January 4, after having risen steadily in 2015.
• JPMorgan’s Doug Anmuth maintained an Overweight rating for the company, while raising the price target from $127 to $136.
• The company’s ability to continue performing well despite macro headwinds is noteworthy, Anmuth stated.

Analyst Doug Anmuth mentioned that Facebook’s ability to post accelerated revenue growth and margin expansion in a tough environment is noteworthy. He added that the company seems to be enjoying the secular shift to mobile advertising.

The company reported robust 4Q15 results, and posted upside on nearly all engagement metrics, with better-than-expected mobile ad revenues of $4.5 billion, representing 80 percent of the total ad revenues.

Facebook has guided to continued strength in its ad revenues in 2016, while indicating an in-line 45-55 percent increase in its cash operating expenditure. Forex related headwinds are, however, expected to continue in the near future.

“We expect FB will continue to pull all of the same levers that worked in 2015, including increasing ad load, adding more advertisers (2.5M+ active advertisers), improving targeting and relevancy, refining measurement tools such as Conversion Lift, and ad product expansion,” the analyst wrote.

Anmuth believes that the company’s messaging product and business model will be at the higher end of management’s priority. He added, “We believe both Messenger and WhatsApp—which now have 800M+ and nearly 1B MAUs, respectively—have the potential to be incremental drivers of revenue in ’17 and beyond.”