As Snap's growth warning sends its stock down 43.04%, other tech stocks drop too: Meta by 7.62%, Pinterest by 23.64%, Alphabet by 4.95%, and Twitter by 5.55%
Snap’s warning revived a pattern visible in its earlier earnings-driven stock tumble, when its results were treated as a warning for other unprofitable technology companies. Here, the sell-off immediately spread to Meta, Pinterest, Alphabet, and Twitter, making Snap a market read-through rather than an isolated equity story.
Later coverage tied another Snap earnings shock to worries about online advertising, with Meta and Alphabet again declining. That recurrence gives the initial cross-stock move more significance: investors were using Snap’s growth signals to reassess advertising-dependent peers.
First-order effects
Snap’s 43.04% drop was accompanied by immediate repricing at Meta (-7.62%), Pinterest (-23.64%), Alphabet (-4.95%), and Twitter (-5.55%).
Pinterest absorbed the sharpest peer decline, while Meta, Alphabet, and Twitter were pulled into the same market sell-off despite no separate operating update reported here.
Second-order effects
Snap’s warning became a benchmark for how investors valued the growth outlook of peer platforms, increasing the market sensitivity of Meta, Pinterest, Alphabet, and Twitter to advertising-related signals.
The later post-Q2 Snap plunge and renewed declines at Meta and Alphabet reinforced that earnings from one platform could reset expectations across the online-advertising group.
Third-order effects
If this pattern persists, public markets will price major ad-supported platforms less as independent companies and more as a correlated group whose valuations move on shared growth and advertising-demand signals.
Snap’s repeated role as an early warning signal points to a broader divide between platforms able to sustain growth expectations and those whose results trigger sector-wide reassessments.
The trend: Advertising-platform equities are becoming increasingly linked in public markets, with Snap’s results serving as a recurring read-through for larger peers.
I'm not convinced that Apple's privacy push is a net positive. The end result: I get less relevant ads and it's harder for companies to grow. In a way, Facebook and Google gathering all of our data and making it easier to target us with more relevant content was a social good.
I also think there's a dramatic overreaction to how much info those companies have, what kind it is, and how much it's “sold.” Facebook doesn't package up your SSN and sell it for a price. It lets you pay to show ads to people in Minnesota who like Gilmore Girls.
These $SNAP earnings that are 100 days apart...FFS I mean first off how can you have so little visibility And thanks CNBCq for clickbait hype and panic headlines within 100 days... (NO position) https://twitter.com/...
GDPR and Apple's App Tracking Transparency have decimated more small business jobs than any policy change in the last decade. All in an attempt to inflict pain on Facebook by a handful of privacy absolutists in Cupertino & Brussels.
@nikitabier I think Apple's motivations were more insidious: to promote their own advertising network which, quite remarkably, doesn't have the same limitations.
And if you think you can simply tip elections with a little bit of ad spend, remember Mike Bloomberg spent $500 million during his presidential campaign, and only won the territory of American Samoa in the Democratic Primary.
Who manifested the political will for these changes? The morons at the New York Times who created the hysteria about Facebook and distracted us from the App Store monopoly.
@mkobach this isn't necessarily a bad thing, imo. If these companies needed to track cross-app data to make a profit, were they viable companies to begin with? (I also happen to think online ads + the way their KPIs are interpreted need an overhaul, so I may be in minority here)
I suspect $SNAP management had underestimated the negative impact on its revenue from Apple ATT before their disastrous guidance update today. They may have intentionally downplayed the impact to contrast with Meta's pushing back against ATT. $FB
Apple doesn't ask do you want worse ads on Twitter & Snapchat and retailers you use like Wish & Manscaped going out of business or are personalized ads OK? That's the actual tradeoff but instead they spit hyperbole about tracking while their features don't get same treatment. htt…
@nikitabier Rather than privacy absolutism, isn't it simply rational corporate strategy for Apple to do this because it simultaneously 1) weakens Facebook as a competitor 2) gains consumer goodwill bc Apple seems consumer-aligned & trustworthy 3) some mild goodwill with regulator…
@OakSyder @nikitabier I'd argue journalists were mainly just throwing stuff against the wall desperately trying to get people to care and that one stuck. Main thing journos don't like is being disintermediated by tech
Apple's App Tracking Transparency was an obvious attack on Facebook. But it turns out Apple inflicted more pain on Shopify, Snapchat, Pinterest, and millions of small and medium sized businesses instead.
The online advertising industry was a tradeoff and Apple put it's finger on the scale to hurt Facebook & Google but took out every social app ( $SNAP, $PINS, etc) and e-commerce player ( $SHOP) as the COVID bump disappeared thus pushing the mine cart down the recession valley. ht…
Street trying to figure out if SNAP is really a macro indicator, or just a problem company... Pinterest taking heavy damage. // $SNAP $TWTR $PINS $COMP $FB https://www.thetechnologyletter.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Fallout from Snap's warning: Ad-exposed Big Techs (Google, Facebook, Amazon) shed more than $150B in combined market cap, while Snap and Pinterest plunge and Twitter down even more from a contracted takeover price. My piece with @DoubleLJSquared: https://www.wsj.com/...
$SNAP shares plummet as guidance is reduced. The narrative that Advanced Conversions saves $SNAP from the perils of ATT was suspect to me. Curious if this guidance update has anything to do with fingerprinting potentially being policed starting in Q3. https://www.cnbc.com/...