If you own stocks, bad news, you probably just lost money. Social networking giant Meta, better known as Facebook, is off more than 20% in after-hours trading. And Spotify, music streaming impressario and podcasting middleweight, is off more than 15% after the close of trading today. Both sharp declines come in the wake of underwhelming results from PayPal, which also saw its shares fall, and pretty good results from Alphabet. Alphabet’s strong Q4 performance is starting to look more like an outlier than median-indicator. Let’s talk Meta, and then Shopify, and parse out just what is going on. Meta’s expensive quarter and slack guidance In the fourth quarter, Facebook generated revenues of $33.67 billion, leading to operating income of $12.59 billion, and net income of $10.29 billion. The company also posted earnings per share of $3.67. How did those figures compare to analyst expectations? Per Yahoo Finance averages, analysts had expected the company to post $33.41 billion in revenue, and earnings per share of $3.84 billion. So Facebook managed solid top line even if it missed on per-share profit. The profit miss was not merely a few cents per share, however; it’s a bigger problem for the firm. To make…
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Why Facebook and Spotify are getting hammered in after-hours trading | TechCrunch
