For the third trading day in a row, stock for the social network giant, Facebook, has floundered in price raising investor concerns. Facebook is trading at 59 times projected earnings for the next 12 months.
The IPO that raised $16 billion for Facebook placing the value of the company at $104 billion, has investors scratching their heads wondering what exactly happened. Today is the worse day so far with a loss of -8.90% at closing at 31.00 down -3.03 for the day. After hours trading has seen another drop of another-.87% putting stock further down at 30.73. This even as short trading triggers were tripped.
Investors are curious what CEO Zuckerberg is going to do to bolster the value of the company. He may have to find a way to get his 900+million users to generate money soon.
Zuckerman says that he is more interested in long term results rather than short term fixes to shore up the price.
Michael Yoshikami, the CEO of Destination Wealth Management may be right about the value of the company when he pegged the value at $30 a share. It is within a point of that now.
“The stock is down because the valuation was simply too high without a clear plan to accelerate advertising revenue,” Yoshikami said. “I’m sure many are surprised that euphoria didn’t irrationally kick up shares, but perhaps investors have learned the lessons from the dot-com crash. Valuations must make sense even for an iconic Web brand.”
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Brian Wieser of Pivotal reseach Group was the first to come out with a “Sell” rating on Facebook on Friday, feels the same about the social network’s stock. Although he believes the stock is not a bad investment, he feels that the asking price is much too high. He feels the asking price should be $30 a share as well.
Currently, the arguement on the street is that it isn’t Facebook that is at fault but NASDAQ. WallStreet insiders are saying that by Monday, NASDAQ had told investors that had difficulties selling stock to fill out a form listing what you sold your stock for and what you thought you sold the stock at. This caused a sell-off for 30 minutes.
Many analysts are calling for a much higher drop in the stock saying that the right number would be under $10. Others say that the stock will rise again into the $40 range.
Will all of the issues with Facebook stock straighten out, will it go up or down? It is difficult to say, we will be watching.