Evan Spiegel, co-founder of Snap Inc. and CEO speaks at the DisruptSF2019 conference held at Moscone … [+]
Social media companies’ share prices soared during the pandemic as people spent more time online. Now those stocks are coming back to Earth—along with the fortunes of their billionaire founders. Snap, Meta Networks and Pinterest founders lost $10 billion each in just one-day. SME estimates.
Shares of Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, plummeted an astounding 43% on Tuesday from Monday’s close following Snapchat’s downward revision late Monday of its initial second quarter guidance. According to the social media giant, it expected less revenue and profits than initially anticipated. Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel (cofounder) is now worth $1.7billion less than Monday. That’s a drop of 35% as of Wednesday market close. He’s now worth an estimated $3.1 billion. Snap cofounder Bobby Murphy’s fortune fell by $1.9 billion on Tuesday to an estimated $2.9 billion.
“The macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated,” Snap said in a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Snap didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment. SME.
Snap shares dropped since last fall. This trend has continued even after Apple allowed users to turn off targeted ads. Snapchat shares fell 85% from the peak of $83 at late September, when they were at their highest point at $12.79.
Spiegel isn’t the only social media billionaire getting hammered by big changes in the global economy, including inflation, the war in Ukraine, higher interest rates, declining user interest and marketers spending less money on ads. Pinterest, Meta Platforms (formerly known as Facebook) and Twitter stocks all declined on Tuesday, as investors worry that Snap’s worsening outlook portends a dire year for other social media companies.
Pinterest, after Snap is second in terms of percentages. The shares of the photo-sharing site fell by almost 24% Tuesday. After losing 20% in less than 24 hours, Paul Sciarra and Ben Silbermann, the cofounders of Photo-sharing website are worth $1.1billion each.
Meta Platforms, which operates Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp, is down 7.6% since Monday, erasing $5.2 billion from founder Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune. Twitter shares fell 5%, causing a $405 million hit to founder Jack Dorsey’s net worth.
Shares of Google parent Alphabet, not a social media company but a big tech bellwether, fell 5% on Tuesday, dragging down Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s fortune by a combined $9 billion.
