What happened
Shares of Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META -0.52%) are up nicely on Wednesday, climbing about 3% as of 11:50 a.m. ET. The stock's gain builds on its momentum yesterday, when shares climbed along with the broader market.
Meta Platforms shares are up along with many other tech stocks today. An upbeat day in tech may be due to a growing appetite for tech stocks after many of them have underperformed recently.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Tech stocks generally have more momentum than the overall market today; the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is up more than 0.3% and the S&P 500 is trading flat at the time of this writing.
Not only has Facebook stock underperformed the S&P 500 year to date, but it has slid sharply in recent months. Even including the stock's momentum this week, shares are down 13% over the past three months. During this same timeframe, the S&P 500 gained 3.6%. The stock's recent gains suggest investors may believe shares have become undervalued.
Now what
Despite the stock's weakness recently, analysts have bullish expectations for the company's growth. Their consensus forecast calls for full-year revenue of $118 billion in 2021 and then $140 billion in 2022. In addition, analysts are modeling for a 38% increase in Facebook's earnings per share next year. These are bullish expectations for a dominant market leader that trades at just 24 times earnings.
