Amazon, Meta, Booking, Uber on top at Wedbush in 2024
Dec. 28, 2023 11:07 AM ET
By: Christiana Sciaudone, SA News Editor
 tigerstrawberry
Wedbush Securities is feeling good about consumer internet platforms in 2024, with top picks including Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Meta (NASDAQ: META), Booking ( BKNG) and Uber (NYSE: UBER).
A group of analysts, led by Scott Devitt, highlighted five key themes for next year.
- Growth rates for digital ads and e-commerce will accelerate with the penetration of online shopping rising 99 basis points and digital ads spending will increase 230 basis points to 77% of total U.S. media spend. E-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2023 accounted for 15.6% of total sales, according to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce.
- Retail media will lead digital advertising growth, increasing 22%. Amazon’s advertising revenue growth will outpace the broader industry.
- Demand for international leisure travel will slow and comparisons to 2023 will be challenging. The average daily rate, or ADR, will slow in most regions and negatively impact Airbnb ( ABNB), Booking and Expedia ( EXPE).
- Recently launched and upcoming generative AI services from Amazon, Google and Meta are positioned for increased adoption and monetization as the number of available services and use cases expands. The market for generative AI is expected to grow over 100% to $137B in 2024, led by infrastructure used for training large language models.
- Cost controls from the past two years will continue and margins will rise for most companies the bank covers, even after increasing in 2023.
What ifs
Wedbush also listed five possible themes for the year that are inconsistent with market consensus and run counter to what it believes investors are expecting.
- Retail media growth could pull advertising dollars away from digital advertising mediums, creating headwinds for Google and Meta.
- Travel materially outperforms expectations and consumer preferences for experiences over goods persists, benefiting Airbnb and Booking.
- Consumer-facing generative AI product adoption proves further out than expected, hurting Meta, Google and Microsoft.
- 2024 could surprise investors should ongoing side projects at Amazon and Alphabet become more prominent commercially and are increasingly discussed by management.
- Virtual reality adoption accelerates. Meta released its latest VR headset, the Meta Quest 3, in October and Apple is reportedly planning to launch its first headset, the Vision Pro, in late January or early February.
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