Morgan Stanley upgrades Reddit, forecasts strong revenue growth

Investing.com -- Shares of Reddit (NYSE:RDDT) Inc. rose more than 3% in pre-market trading on Monday following an upgrade from Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), which raised its rating on the company to “overweight” with a price target of $200. 

Analysts at Morgan Stanley cited Reddit’s strong engagement and advertising pipeline as key drivers of its future growth, flagging the platform’s potential to outpace its peers in user engagement, time spent, and advertising revenue growth.

Morgan Stanley’s analysts underscored Reddit’s robust investment in six areas of engagement and seven advertising innovation initiatives, which they believe are still in the early stages. 

These investments, coupled with rapid advancements in machine learning and ad automation, are expected to deliver outsized returns. 

The brokerage noted that Reddit is well-positioned to maintain industry-leading incremental margins while expanding its user base and monetization capabilities.

Engagement remains a critical pillar of Reddit’s growth strategy. The platform’s U.S. daily active users for 2024 have already exceeded initial expectations by 20%. 

Morgan Stanley attributed this performance to Reddit’s improvements in content discovery and recommendation through machine learning, streamlined onboarding processes, and increased traffic from Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL). 

The analysts also pointed to ongoing initiatives, such as enhancing content personalization, boosting video and conversation tools, and developing on-platform search capabilities, as significant opportunities to drive further user growth and engagement.

On the advertising front, Morgan Stanley highlighted seven key areas where Reddit is innovating, including ad delivery, measurement, performance, and end-to-end automation tools. 

The analysts compared Reddit’s efforts to Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage Plus tools, which have demonstrated measurable gains in advertiser return on ad spend. 

Reddit’s U.S. ad unit pricing and ad load are still significantly lower than those of its competitors, suggesting ample room for growth as the platform scales its advertising offerings.

In terms of financial projections, Morgan Stanley’s revised bottom-up ad model forecasts 35% annual growth in U.S. ad revenue from 2024 to 2027, more than double the expected growth rates of industry peers. 

By 2027, Reddit’s global ad revenue is expected to reach approximately $3.1 billion, supported by rising ad pricing, increased engagement, and improved ad load. 

This growth is expected to translate into $1 billion in EBITDA by 2026 and $1.4 billion by 2027.

The upgrade to a $200 price target represents a 23% upside from current levels, with analysts applying a 36x EV/EBITDA multiple to 2026 estimates. 

Morgan Stanley’s bull case, which assumes further advancements in machine learning, ad automation, and on-platform search monetization, projects an 85% upside with a $300 price target. 

On-platform search is identified as a particularly promising opportunity, with over 1 billion monthly searches providing a foundation for potential engagement and monetization gains starting in 2026.

Morgan Stanley also noted that Reddit’s trajectory toward GAAP profitability in early 2025 could pave the way for its inclusion in the S&P 500 index, a milestone that could further boost investor interest and fund flows.

However, the note flagged risks to Reddit’s growth story, including potential challenges in sustaining user and revenue growth and heightened competition from larger digital platforms like Meta (NASDAQ:META), Google, and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). 

These competitors continue to enhance their offerings, setting a high bar for Reddit to match in terms of advertiser tools and user engagement features.

Despite these risks, Morgan Stanley analysts remained optimistic about Reddit's ability to capitalize on its current momentum, driven by its innovative approach to engagement and advertising.