Mark Zuckerberg is in Rome — and Facebook investors are burning.
The stock yesterday sunk below $30 for the first time as the company continued to lose value in its seventh trading day since its public debut May 18, when shares sold for more than $42 as they hit the public markets.
Facebook shares were down about 9.6 percent, closing at $28.84, and at one point during yesterday’s trading short-selling was halted after the stock was down more than 10 percent for a period.
One Wall Street insider called it “social deflation,” and said Facebook is suffering from negativity after its botched initial public offering.
The day it went public, Nasdaq glitches delayed trading, bankers overfilled orders for shares, the price was considered overvalued and some banks downgraded their revenue projections for Facebook’s second quarter just prior to the IPO.
“There isn’t much to reverse course until we see Facebook begin to show signs of fundamental improvement,” one analyst said.
Yesterday, another embarrassment continued to burden the company: The $1 billion Instagram purchase.
Zuckerberg, who is in Rome on his honeymoon, was the driving force behind the acquisition of the popular photo-sharing app.
Facebook thought the deal would close by tomorrow, but regulators thought differently — and yesterday the Federal Trade Commission said it would give the sale a second review.
There have been some concerns raised about the social network swooping up one of its few major competitors.
Also, investors were confronted yesterday by the possibility Facebook could exhaust additional resources by developing its own smartphone, and speculation it could be trolling for a second billion-dollar buy.
Facebook is coping with its increasingly mobile audience, which is accessing the site from phones and tablets.
There also were reports that Facebook could buy European Web browser developer Opera, whose stock was riding high yesterday.
Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Federal Trade Commission, the company, public debut
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