{"id":18962,"date":"2012-07-28T14:12:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-28T12:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=18962"},"modified":"2012-07-28T14:13:21","modified_gmt":"2012-07-28T12:13:21","slug":"facebook-value-down-10-billion-outlook-unclear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/18962\/facebook-value-down-10-billion-outlook-unclear\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook value down $10 billion, outlook unclear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Investors wiped $10 billion off the value of Facebook Inc on Friday, taking the recently listed shares to a new low, after the social network offered no forecast and analysts said mobile investments would put future earnings under pressure.<\/p>\n<p>The 17 percent slide in the shares took Facebook&#8217;s market capitalization to $48 billion &#8212; half its IPO launch value of $100 billion in May.<\/p>\n<p>The latest slide cost CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the 28-year-old who founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, around $2.3 billion, based on his shareholding.<\/p>\n<p>The social network just beat revenue expectations on Thursday in its first quarterly earnings but the company failed to reassure investors about its future prospects.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Facebook has established itself as an Internet utility but it might take a while for Facebook to gain Wall Street love,&#8221; Citi Investment Research analysts said in a note.<\/p>\n<p>Investors worried about how the social network would make money from mobile advertising had hoped that the company would signal that revenue growth was picking up.<\/p>\n<p>The shares have shed around 40 percent of their value since the company&#8217;s ill-starred debut at $38 on May 18.<\/p>\n<p>They fell to a record low $22.28 in morning trading on Friday before recovering a little to $23.03. It was far and away the most heavily traded stock, with 52 million changing hands.<\/p>\n<p>At least four brokerages, including Barclays Capital, cut their price targets on Facebook stock, although most suggested it was worth much more than current trading levels.<\/p>\n<p>Created just eight years ago, Facebook continues to grow &#8212; hitting 955 million active users a month at the end of June &#8212; but its shares have slid since its May IPO as investors questioned a valuation of more than 50 times earnings.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_55993\" style=\"width: 609px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Facebook-Value-slide.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55993\" class=\" wp-image-55993\" title=\"Monitors show the value of the Facebook, Inc. stock during morning trading at the NASDAQ Marketsite in New York\" src=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Facebook-Value-slide.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"599\" height=\"396\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-55993\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Monitors show the value of the Facebook, Inc. stock during morning trading at the NASDAQ Marketsite in New York June 4, 2012.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>MOBILE MOJO<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>J.P. Morgan Securities analysts said the stock could also be under pressure because some early investors will be able to sell shares from August 19, potentially flooding the market with stock.<\/p>\n<p>But most focus was on the company&#8217;s mobile strategy, with big questions about whether it can sustain growth as users increasingly access Facebook on mobiles, where it has found it hard to squeeze in advertisements.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook only recently began to offer limited advertising on its mobile platform, so far generating little revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook is investing heavily in improving mobile apps and building a platform on top of which new apps can be built, but so far that has increased capital expenditure but not delivered big gains in revenue.<\/p>\n<p>The company, which competes with established Web companies such as Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, said capital spending more than tripled to $413 million in the second quarter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Facebook is in the early stages of an important transition in its (mobile) advertising business that should drive accelerating growth and margin expansion over time,&#8221; J.P. Morgan Securities analysts said.<\/p>\n<p>The company ended the quarter with 543 million active monthly mobile users, up two-thirds from a year earlier but advertising views lagged user growth. Mobile access now accounts for 57 percent of total users.<\/p>\n<p>The bright spot was that sponsored stories brought in much better rates than traditional ads, allowing Facebook to increase prices by 9 percent, Morgan Stanley analysts said.<\/p>\n<p>A sponsored story is an advertisement that appears on a user&#8217;s Facebook page and tells the user that a friend &#8220;likes&#8221; the advertiser.<\/p>\n<p>Despite Facebook&#8217;s slide from grace, many analysts still see the stock bouncing back.<\/p>\n<p>Six analysts rate the stock a &#8220;strong buy,&#8221; 11 rate it &#8220;buy,&#8221;, 17 rate it a &#8220;hold&#8221;, while one each rate it a &#8220;sell&#8221; and &#8220;strong sell&#8221;, according to Thomson Reuters&#8217; StarMine. The mean price target on the stock is $38.00, suggesting a 71 percent upside to Friday&#8217;s low of $22.28.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook&#8217;s woes add to pressure at Zynga Inc, which gets nearly all of its revenue from the social platform&#8217;s users. Fading fortunes of hit games such as &#8220;FarmVille&#8221; forced the company on Wednesday to slash its outlook.<\/p>\n<p>(Additional reporting by Aditi Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by Tenzin Pema and Rodney Joyce)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related Articles<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Permanent Link to Facebook begins to show its cracks\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/55897-facebook-begins-to-show-its-cracks.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">Facebook begins to show its cracks<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Permanent Link to Google, Amazon, Facebook form the Internet Association\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/55777-google-ebay-amazon-and-facebook-form-the-internet-association.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">Google, Amazon, Facebook form the Internet Association<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Investors wiped $10 billion off the value of Facebook Inc on Friday, taking the recently listed shares to a new low, after the social network offered no forecast and analysts said mobile investments would put future earnings under pressure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":12885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[25,45,1294,1244],"class_list":["post-18962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-active","tag-facebook","tag-facebook-ipo","tag-mark-zuckerberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18962"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18964,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18962\/revisions\/18964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}