Snap’s Macroeconomic Warning Scares Investors

Snap’s stock dropped about a third of its value on Monday after the social media company issued an unexpected profit warning, citing worsening macroeconomic conditions as a factor.

The parent company of Snapchat claimed in a regulatory filing that “the macroeconomic situation has deteriorated farther and faster than anticipated” after it released guidance on April 22.

As a result, it expects revenues and adjusted earnings before interest, depreciation, and amortization to be “below the low end” of its forecast range in this quarter.

While the company’s fundamentals were “solid,” CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in a note to employees that the company, like others, was facing “increasing prices and interest rates, supply chain bottlenecks and labor disruptions, platform policy changes, the impact of the crisis in Ukraine, and more.” This financial environment has directly impacted social media companies, as well as the marketers who rely on them for revenue.

He stated that the corporation would hire and spend “at a slower rate than we had intended given the operational climate.”

Users under coronavirus lockdowns spend more time and money online in the last two years, boosting the US IT sector.

Fears of increasing interest rates, slowing economic growth, and supply chain disruptions have prompted a deep and broad market sell-off, pushing some of the largest tech companies to eliminate jobs, cut expenses, and recalibrate expectations.

Snap’s stock dropped 30% in after-hours trading to just $16. Other internet firms that rely on digital advertising for the majority of its revenue were also hammered, with Facebook parent Meta and Google’s Alphabet plunging 8% and 5%, respectively. Meta just lowered its hiring objectives for 2022, and Uber is cutting costs as well.

In his message, Spiegel stated that Snap will “examine the remaining of our 2022 budgets,” and that “leaders have been instructed to assess expenditures to find more cost savings.”

Los Angeles, California-based Snap has previously stated that adjusted ebitda for the second quarter would be between break-even and $50 million.

It also predicted revenue increase of 20-25 percent year over year in the second quarter, compared to 116 percent growth in sales during pandemic lockdowns in the second quarter of 2021.

Snap is facing other challenges in addition to the macroeconomic environment. It lost a fifth of its value in October of last year after issuing a gloomy fourth-quarter forecast, blaming interruption to its advertising business caused by Apple’s iPhone privacy rules. Users must give specific permission for apps on Apple’s App Store to track them for advertising purposes, according to the regulations.

“Our community continues to grow, and we continue to see high engagement across Snapchat,” Snap stated on Monday. “Over the long term, we continue to see tremendous opportunity to raise our average revenue per user.”