Social networking site Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is getting
battered from all sides as the stock slumped 7% this week and made a new low of
$18.03 on Friday.
In the markets insider investors are still offloading
large chunks of its shares at regular intervals as an expiry on locked-in
shares releases them for sale in the market.
On the other side analysts and investors are still
uncertain about the company's ability to get more revenues as businesses that
used to advertise on its site, are spending less.
Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who once shared a
room with Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University, has been offloading about
150,000 shares on a daily basis since August 19, when the locked-in shares
became eligible for sale.
According o regulatory filings Moskovitz has offloaded
450,000 Class A shares this week at rates ranging from $19.19 and $19.22. The stake of Dustin A. Moskovitz Trust is now
6.15 million Class A shares. The Trust
holdings also include 106.8 million Class B shares that have higher voting
rights, but can be converted to Class A anytime.
Facebook started off its journey in the stock markets
on a bad note with the New York Stock Exchange delaying the start of trading
due to a software glitch. The shares ended the day's trading almost at the
price they had started at.
Its second quarterly earnings were disappointing with
revenues showing signs of slowing. The company did not make any forecasts and
uncertainty has only grown over what the future holds for the company.
Issues like the company’s mobile strategy and slowing
growth are also bothering investors.
On Friday shares in the company fell 5.4 percent to
$18.06, a record low, after a report that businesses were spending less on
advertising on the site.
There already have been concerns over the continuing
growth in its revenues especially with more than half of its 900-million
subscriber base moving to mobile devices. Facebook has been finding it
difficult to monetise its mobile subscriber base and get marketers on to it.
“Checks on near-term paid media spending remain challenged,”
Daniel Salmon, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets Corp. in New York, said in a
research report today.
eMarketer which recently slashed Facebook's revenue
forecast for this year and the next said that the social network was grappling
with questions from marketers about how well ads on its site are performing.
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