Facebook stock opens at new low a day after first earnings report
Facebook stock opened at a new all-time low Friday, a day after the company released its first quarterly earnings results.
Facebook Inc. shares opened at $23.21 after closing at $26.84 Thursday. Facebook released its 2012 second-quarter results after the market closed, and after an initial surge in after-hours trading, the social network’s stock began falling.
Now the stock is down about 14% and dropped as low as $22.28 Friday after trading at around $28 most of the week.
Facebook’s results beat analysts’ expectations slightly, but some of its other numbers were less than reassuring.
The Menlo Park, Calif., company’s costs and expenses were $1.93 billion, up nearly 300% compared with last year, and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg made it sound as though high expenses could be a regular trend for Facebook for the time being.
Adding to the worries was the earnings call itself. Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and CFO David Ebersman weren’t as specific in their guidance as investors would have liked.
Another thing investors also didn’t like was the growth in Facebook’s revenue. Though revenue was up 32% to $1.18 billion, that rate of growth was slower than a couple of quarters ago.
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