Over 4 in 5 Americans report using a Meta app daily—and those figures could soar if TikTok gets booted

In a recent note to investors, Scott Devitt of Wedbush Securities, while keeping his outperform rating on Meta, raised his price target to $570 from $520, while also noting that Meta provided notably strong forward guidance for Q1.

It’s a forecast bolstered by the company’s strength in digital advertising and more internet users turning to Meta’s apps. According to Wedbush’s latest Consumer Internet Survey, which included responses from more than 1,000 people in the U.S., YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are the most likely to see increased user engagement this year, and that’s with over 80% of respondents saying they already use a Meta product (Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp) multiple times per day.

In Q4 2023, Meta’s “family of apps” ad revenue was $38.7 billion, up 24% from a year earlier. “Within ad revenue, the online commerce vertical was the largest contributor to year-over-year growth, followed by CPG and gaming,” CFO Susan Li said on Meta’s Feb. 1 earnings call. That advertising boost helped total revenue to grow 25% year-over-year to $40.1 billion for the quarter, up from $32.2 billion.

Social media companies have been top of mind. On Saturday, the House passed legislation that could ban TikTok in the U.S. If the platform’s China-based owner, ByteDance, doesn’t divest its ownership stake within a year.

Wedbush’s survey also asked consumers who regularly use TikTok which social media app they’d turn to as a potential replacement, with 60% pointing to either Facebook or Instagram as the most likely alternatives. After Facebook and Instagram, 19% of those surveyed said they’d replace TikTok with YouTube.

Consistent with the survey results, Devitt said, “We would expect Meta to be the primary recipient of redistributed TikTok revenue should the company exit the U.S., with Google the likely number two beneficiary.”

Google is set to report earnings on Thursday.

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

María Soledad Davila Calero curated the Leaderboard and Overheard sections of today’s newsletter.

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Leaderboard

David Phillipps was named CFO at Liv Golf, a professional men’s golf tour. Previously, he was CFO at Equinox’s brands including Equinox, Equinox Hotels, Soul Cycle, and Blink Fitness. Phillipps also served as the SVP of finance at Endeavor, a talent representation organization, which includes the talent agency William Morris, IMG, and the UFC. 

Ashley Mehlman was named CFO at Simpro, a business management software company. Before joining Simpro, Mehlman served as the SVP of financial planning and analysis at Cast & Crew Entertainment Services. The financial planning that Mehlman will provide includes M&A analysis.

Big deal

The Association for Financial Professionals' (AFP) 2024 Payments Fraud and Control Survey finds that 80% of respondents report that their organizations were victims of attempted or actual payments fraud activity in 2023. This reflects a 15-percentage point increase in payments fraud over 2022, which is the highest rate reported since 2018, according to the report, underwritten by Truist. Sixty-five percent of respondents reported their organizations faced check fraud attacks. 

“Fraudsters are leveraging increasingly sophisticated tools, and to overcome this challenge, organizations must prioritize awareness, training, and the review and implementation of stringent policies and procedures,” Jim Kaitz, president and CEO of AFP, said in a statement. 

The report findings are based on a survey of 522 corporate practitioners representing organizations of varying sizes and a broad range of industries.

Going deeper

“The ghosts of ‘Wintel’: What leaders can learn from the diverging paths that made Microsoft a $3 trillion powerhouse and flatlined Intel,” is a new case study by Coins2Day's Geoff Colvin. 

Colvin writes: “There was a time not so long ago that Microsoft and Intel were both atop the tech world. They were neither competitors nor significant customers of each other, but what New York University’s Adam Brandenburger and Yale’s Barry Nalebuff deemed ‘complementors.’ Microsoft built its hugely profitable Windows operating system over the years to work on computers that used Intel’s chips, and Intel designed new chips to run Windows (hence ‘Wintel’).”

Overheard

“The result has been a striking increase in the manufacturing sector’s ability to produce goods, but also an equally dramatic decline in its capacity to generate jobs.” 

—Dani Rodrik, a professor of international political economy at Harvard Kennedy School, wrote in an op-ed published in Project Syndicate. Rodrik questioned the effectiveness of the Biden administration's push in manufacturing. As an example, Rodrik mentioned that semiconductors use the bulk of their capital on infrastructure rather than on jobs.