While Fools should generally take the opinion of Wall Street with a grain of salt, it's not a bad idea to take a closer look at particularly stock-shaking upgrades and downgrades -- just in case their reasoning behind the call makes sense.
What: Shares of Facebook, Inc. (META -10.63%) climbed 2% this morning after FBR Capital initiated coverage on the social-media gorilla with an outperform rating.
So what: Along with the bull call, analyst William Bird planted a price target of $60 on the stock, representing about 30% worth of upside to yesterday's close. While value investors might be turned off by Facebook's share-price surge since the summer, Bird believes there's plenty of room to run given the company's still-juicy growth prospects and strong operational progress of late.
Now what: According to FBR, the stock is set up nicely for solid near-term gains. "FB is an investment in a large-scale datarich platform run by a group of highly innovative people who are likely to continually develop more ideas for improving engagement and monetizing it," FBR noted. "While no one really knows how big Facebook can be, we believe it has significant greenfield opportunity in front of it, it is gaining traction with marketers, and its pricing is inflecting." So while conservative investors should probably maintain their distance, Facebook shares remain an intriguing opportunity for more enterprising Fools.
