Facebook stock falls after Stifel cuts price target, compares company to eBay

Stifel analyst Scott Devitt trimmed his Facebook Inc. FB, -1.69% stock price target to $168 from $195 late Wednesday in a colorful note that compared Facebook to eBay Inc. EBAY, -1.15% and said that Facebook shares belonged in something akin to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. [S: brka] CEO Warren Buffett's "too hard" pile for stocks where there's not enough information out there. Like eBay back in 2014, Facebook is "an unstructured content business built on trust that lost that trust prior to implementing policies to add structure and process," wrote Devitt, who kept his hold rating on shares. He wrote that Instagram may be able to save Facebook, just as PayPal was thought to be able to save eBay back in the day. Still, he's concerned by the uncertainty around Facebook's latest data issue. "We would buy all of our Buy-rated stocks and many of our Hold-rated stocks before we would buy Facebook shares, given the information available to us," Devitt wrote. Facebook shares are down 1.7% in premarket trading but up 21% over the past 12 months. The S&P 500 SPX, -1.38% is up 15% in that time.