Meta’s stock (FB) remains a dog with fleas, especially going into the company’s April 27 Q1 2022 earnings report.
That is the hot take from veteran tech analyst Mark Mahaney at EvercoreISI, who slapped the stock with a short-term negative rating.
“I think the expectations are going to be super low,” Mahaney said on Yahoo Finance Live. “I think we will see signs of brand advertising weakness out of Western Europe. I guess currency headwinds will be a bit of an issue.
The cautious comments from Mahaney are not without good reason.
It’s almost hard to imagine a darker day for the parent company of Facebook than Feb. 3, 2022. Shares crashed 26% by the close of trading after a very disappointing fourth quarter and outlook.
Facebook said it added just 2 million monthly active users in the quarter, barely moving the needle from the prior quarter. In the third quarter, the platform added 15 million monthly active users.
Daily active users fell by 1 million as Facebook saw increased competition from TikTok. The company missed analysts’ profit estimates by a whopping 14 cents.
For 2022, Facebook saw slowing growth and a $10 billion hit from privacy changes to Apple’s iOS operating system.
The stock’s slide wiped away $251.3 billion in market value from Meta. It marked the biggest one-day loss in value for any U.S. company ever.
Shares of Meta have largely flat-lined since that report as Wall Street braces for another financial shoe to drop.
In the wake of Netflix’s shockingly bad quarter and market reaction, the Street is right to be nervous about Meta.
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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