Facebook shares plunged on Monday after Barron’s, the influential markets-focused newspaper and Web site, said the stock was still sharply overvalued and was possibly only worth US$15.
The shares slumped 9.06 percent to end the day at US$20.79, after dipping as low as US$20.36.
The fall came after Barron’s published a story saying the world’s largest online social networking company was still overpriced despite a drop of nearly half since its initial public offering (IPO) four months ago.
“Facebook’s 40 percent plunge from its initial public offering price of US$38 in May has millions of investors asking a single question: Is the stock a buy?” Barron’s said. “The short answer is ‘No.’”
“What are the shares worth? Perhaps only US$15,” Barron’s said, adding that even at that level they are “no bargain.”
The shares are still above their post-IPO low of US$17.55, but analysts have warned that on Oct. 29 a huge new supply of shares from company employees, up to now prohibited from selling their holdings, could flood the market, putting more downward pressure on the price.
Addressing the IPO flop for the first time on Sept. 11, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said: “The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing and we care about our shareholders.”
However, he assured that over time, “we’re going to be making more money on mobile than we make on desktop.”
However, Barron’s argued that the firm was behind on addressing the challenge of getting advertising revenue from people using Facebook on their smartphones.
Separately, Facebook on Monday denied reports that it displayed some users’ old private messages in public “timelines” at the social network.
Facebook said it investigated the complaints, initially from members in France, and was satisfied there had been no breach of privacy.
“A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline,” it said in an e-mail response to a reporter’s inquiry.
“Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages,” it said.
Concerns that private Facebook messages from 2007, 2008, or 2009 were being posted for public viewing spread wildly on one-to-many text message service Twitter after a story first appeared in free French daily Metro.
Facebook remained adamant that messages at issue were “wall” posts that have always been open to viewing by others and not made with private side-conversation tools subsequently added to the service.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS