Pivotal starts bullishly on tech behemoths Google and Meta

Pivotal Research started on tech giants Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Meta (NASDAQ:META) with a “buy” rating on Tuesday.

The equity research firm said Google is in a very strong competitive position with a deep moat around its dominant core search business model and noted that Meta, with Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership, is the world’s dominant social media company.

On Google, the firm said even though the company is caught up in antritrust trials, the bottom line is that GOOG stock has already effectively discounted the most logical negative outcomes. They said the forecast is conservative in regards to search, while expecting large gains in cloud revenue and an arguably conservative value on some of their moonshot assets.

On Meta, Pivotal sees a strong revenue growth outlook going forward from increased usage/new products/better targeting/higher prices boosted by cost efficiencies (enabled by AI) and eventually materially declining Reality Labs losses combined with what appears to be an attractive valuation.

GOOG has a PT of $215, implying an upside of 30%. Stock is up nearly 21% so far this year, the same as the benchmark S&P index.

META has a PT of $780, an upside of 37.5%. Shares are up 64% year-to-date.