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The New York Stock Exchange opened lower, stunned by the poor results of Meta (Facebook) and the spectacular fall in the company’s stock (-25.87%), which swept away everything in its path. Around 2:45 p.m. GMT (3:45 p.m. Brussels time), the Nasdaq index, with a strong technological composition, lost 1.92% to 14,141.12 points, the Dow Jones lost 0.54% to 35,386.21 points, and the index expanded S&P 500 slipped 1.47% to 4,528.96 points.
“It’s Facebook’s decline that is shocking investors”, commented, in a note, Patrick O’Hare, of Briefing.com.
This brutal movement “questions the solidity of the broad rebound that had been observed during the last sessions”, he added.
The New York Stock Exchange had thus managed to hang its fourth consecutive day of increases on Wednesday, after a very hectic month of January.
“200 billion dollars (or the market value erased by the fall of Meta on Thursday) is more than the combined capitalization of 452 companies in the S&P 500”, which has only 500, as its name suggests, noted Gregori Volokhine, president of Meeschaert Financial Services.
Goal lost 25%
Meta fell 25.87% to $239.43 as investors struggled to digest falling net profit in the fourth quarter, as well as stagnant Facebook user numbers from the previous quarter.
Even more, the market was worried about the “headwinds” that the social network reported for 2022. The founder and CEO of Facebook, now Meta, spoke of competition from other platforms, even naming TikTok.
Meta attracted with it other listed social networks, such as Twitter (-6.08%) or Snap (-18.93%), but also more broadly the photo-sharing site Pinterest (-8.45%), and d other stars of the new digital economy, such as Shopify (-5.27%) or Block (ex-Square, -6.37%).
Also targeted by investors, Spotify (-14.79% to 163.54 dollars), guilty of not having given forecasts for the whole of 2022, as well as of posting slow growth.
Margins are also under pressure and the online music service expects another sharp decline in the first quarter.
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