One of Wall Street’s biggest bulls on the yuan platform believes its business can easily grow during a Trump presidency. Jefferies’ Brent Thill sees Facebook as vital despite President Donald Trump calling it “the enemy of the people” on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday ”. “I don’t agree with the idea that it’s the enemy. It’s the opposite with small businesses,” the company’s head of technology told CNBC’s “Fast Money.” “The reality is that the economic value of advertising from all these small businesses is off the charts.” But President Trump’s comments today appear to have triggered some profit-taking. Facebook parent Meta’s daily performance was its worst in nearly a year. The stock fell more than 4% to $483.59 per share. “Are there significant risks and political risks? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, I think the value created for these small businesses is so great that it’s hard to deny that fact,” Thiel said. “This is not a fundamental risk.” Thiel is particularly optimistic about Facebook’s advertising business. “Every advertiser we’ve talked to over the past six months has seen incremental budgets move from Google to Meta because of the quality of the product, the quality of the targeting and the quality of the returns,” Thill said. “We think they can capture 40% to 50% of incremental ad spend this year.” “I would buy the stock on this weakness” Despite the poor trading day, Meta is only up about 37% this year . “I would buy the stock on this weakness,” Thiel said. “Meta is now one of the lowest-priced names in our coverage universe…it’s one of the cheapest names out there.” He has a buy rating and a 12-month price target of $550 per share on Meta. That represents an increase of about 14% from Monday’s closing price.Disclosure: No disclaimer
