Facebook shares fell nearly 5% on Monday after the company suffered its worst service outage in about 13 years, and a day after “60 Minutes” aired an interview with a whistleblower, who accused the company ofbetraying democracy.
Shares suffer largest decline in nearly a year as Facebook.The market wasbroadly down Monday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropping over 2%. The decline was particularly sharp among social media stocks, asTwitter,SnapandPinteresteach fell more than 5%.
Shortly before noon ET, Facebook’s main app experienced an outage for more than six hours Monday, as did its Instagram and WhatsApp services.
The outage marks the worst for Facebook since 2008, when a bug knocked the company’s services offline for about a day, affecting about 80 million users. The company now boasts 3 billion users.
It’s been a rough week for Facebook, and got worse Sunday night.
In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Frances Haugen revealed herself to be the whistleblower who provided key internal company documents to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal has used the information in a series of recent reports titled “The Facebook Files.”
Haugen is a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation division who left the company in May and made copies of numerous internal files before departing the company. Haugen accused Facebook of prioritizing its “own profits over public safety — putting people’s lives at risk.”
What’s Next For Facebook Stock?
Interestingly, earnings estimates for Facebook continued to move higher in recent weeks. Currently, analysts expect that Facebook will report earnings of $14.14 per share in 2021 and $16.09 per share in 2022, so the stock is trading at roughly 20 forward P/E, which looks like a normal valuation level in the current market environment.
However, the market is focused on regulatory risks rather than earnings. If global regulators put enough pressure on Facebook, analysts will have to adjust their forecasts.
The main risk for Facebook is the disruption of the current business model rather than fines from regulators. It is hard to evaluate this risk in a quantitative way, so the market is nervous.
It remains to be seen whether speculative traders will rush to buy Facebook stock after it declined by roughly 15% from the recent highs. The headline risk is significant, and the stock may gain additional downside momentum on any negative news.
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