Truist Securities has raised its price target on Meta to a Street-high $1,000 from $763, citing early traction for its Muse AI agent. Analyst Youssef Squali maintained a Buy rating and added Muse's potential to his long-term estimates, projecting $28.5 billion in incremental revenue by 2030. Meta's shares have surged 21% since Muse's launch on September 8, outpacing the S&P 500's 2% gain. Squali expects third-quarter revenue of $63.9 billion, up 25% year-over-year, driven by higher ad performance and wearables.
Bank of America double-upgraded Salesforce to Buy from Underperform, raising its price target to $285 from $160. Analyst Tal Liani argued that AI will deepen enterprise dependence on platforms like Salesforce, which house critical business logic and data. He outlined a four-layer architecture supporting Salesforce's AI adoption, including Slack and the Anthropic-powered Claudeforce for natural-language interaction. BofA also raised its subscription and support revenue growth forecasts for fiscal 2028 and 2029 to 10.4% and 10.5%.
Barclays downgraded Dell, HPE, and NetApp to Equal Weight from Overweight, citing valuations that have run ahead of enterprise AI adoption. Analyst Tim Long noted that these stocks are up an average of 140% this year, trading at about 21 times estimated 2027 earnings. He expects a meaningful deceleration in growth over the next two years as memory prices normalize. Barclays cut its Dell target to $574 from $603.
Barclays strategist Emmanuel Cau suggested that the best of the AI thematic trade may be behind us, citing hot inflation data and a sharp selloff in chip stocks. He advised investors to become more selective, favoring companies with proven business models and strong cash flows. Cau also noted that Europe remains a useful diversifier given its lower AI and semiconductor concentration.
HSBC downgraded Adobe to Hold from Buy, cutting its price target to $267 from $310. Analyst Stephen Bersey warned of a free open-source clone of Adobe's Creative Cloud suite, which could pose a threat to its revenue. He advised users to avoid the download due to security and legal risks. HSBC cut its revenue estimates by about 1% and adjusted earnings estimates by 1-2%.