As earnings season pulls into high gear, Magnificent Seven stocks are headlining this week's calendar. So what are analysts projecting for Meta Platforms as it reports fourth-quarter results on Thursday?
A look at the chart on IBD MarketSmith shows Meta stock is already in a profit zone from a 326.20 entry in a consolidation. That should give investors a cue to take some profits ahead of earnings. It is the only Magnificent Seven stock to reach a profit target before earnings.
Analysts polled by FactSet expect earnings of $4.84 a share compared with $1.76 for the year-earlier quarter, marking a 172% leap. For the full year, analysts expect earnings of $18.53 per share, or growth of 116%.
Wall Street sees sales at $39.1 billion, suggesting slower sales growth of 21% after three quarters of acceleration. However, that puts analysts toward the higher end of the range Meta gave of $36.5 billion to $40 billion.
The company expects to increase its spending next year and higher losses from Reality Labs as it continues to develop its virtual-reality and augmented-reality products.
Meta Stock Has Strong Ratings
The Meta stock chart shows no sign of stress, however.
Meta's relative strength line has been picking up. The Composite Rating is a perfect 99 while the EPS Rating is also impressive at 95. The Relative Strength Rating of 96 also shows that the stock continues to outperform the vast majority of stocks in the database. Meta heads the internet content group that holds behemoths like Alphabet.
The up/down volume ratio is 1.4, Any number above 1 shows that volume when the stock moved up was higher than volume when the stock moved lower in the 50 most recent trading days.
Volume has tapered off this past week amid the stock's gains but has remained more constant on the Meta stock weekly chart.
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