Facebook set an all-time high today, closing at $88.86 per share, valuing the company at just under $250 billion.
Positive analyst sentiment has helped propel the company’s shares in recent days. Facebook traded around $82 as recently as last Friday, making its fresh heights even more notable — a few points for a company as valuable as Facebook mean billions in value being created, or erased.
Piper Jaffray raised its Facebook share price target to $120, a massive premium to the company’s share price even today, following its recent rally. Adding to the mix, RBC Capital indicated that it currently thinks that Facebook is worth $105 per share, a more modest, but still stiff figure when placed next to Facebook’s recent, pre-rally trading range.
For context, Facebook is now worth three commas — 11 figures — more than Walmart.
However, what’s most interesting in the Facebook bump isn’t the simple fact that it is now worth more — shares and markets gyrate. Instead, it’s the reasons why analysts are more bullish that are notable: Piper cited the Oculus Rift headset as a coming revenue source, while RBC gave the top line potential of Instagram as key to Facebook’s value.
Translating those points slightly, it seems that investors are taking into account the revenue side of Facebook’s past purchases, and are adjusting their expectations higher as those acquisitions mature into income streams. That concept underscores how well the social company has done on the M&A side of things these past few years.
In the wake of its IPO, Facebook traded at or under the $20 mark for much of 2012. It’s different days now for the company.