Welcome to "#SocialStocks," The Fly's weekly recap of Wall Street's reactions to social media stock news.
ZUCKERBERG HALTS FACEBOOK STOCK SALES: On Thursday, January 3, Bloomberg reported that Facebook (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar stock sale came to a halt in the fourth quarter of 2018 as he did not sell a single share for the first quarter in over two years. Zuckerberg said he would sell 35M to 75M Facebook shares back in 2017 as part of a pledge to give away the majority of his fortune during his life, and the halt came as the company's stock fell 20% amid a broader market rout.
GOLDMAN SEES SNAPCHAT USER DECLINES CONTINUING: This morning, Goldman Sachs analyst Heath Terry downgraded Snap (SNAP) to Neutral and lowered his price target for the shares to $6 from $10. In a research note to investors, the analyst said he believes Snap's sequential user declines are likely to continue in Q4. In order to generate a Twitter-like turnaround, the company will have to return to user growth; however, he sees uncertainty around Snap's new Android app and its ability to reaccelerate daily active user growth, particularly in the midst of growing competition from Facebook's Instagram and ByteDance's Tik Tok. The analyst, nonetheless, said he still believes there is "significant value" in Snap's users.
BARRON’S SAYS REGAINING TRUST IS TECH’S TOP ISSUE IN 2019: As the tech industry looks back on a difficult 2018 and warily approaches the year to come, one word is increasingly on the lips of Silicon Valley executives: "Trust is the No. 1 thing you sell," Jon Swartz wrote in this week's edition of Barron's, citing Twilio's (TWLO) CEO Jeff Lawson. Social-media companies like Facebook and Twitter (TWTR) spent most of 2018 trying to find a balance between free speech, safety, and running a sticky platform, the report noted. If there's hope for change in 2019, Barron's said, it could come from those new public companies that have the chance to reset the notion of a 21st century tech company.
Ticker changed to META
+5.21 (+3.95%)
Snap
+0.145 (+2.55%)
+1.72 (+6.14%)
Twilio
+7.56 (+9.31%)