Snap’s record rout leads $142bn selloff

The Snapchat application on a smartphone in an arranged photo. Snap posted its biggest one-day drop on record after the Snapchat parent company warned that Apple’s data collection rules and global supply-chain bottlenecks are weighing on advertising spending.

Snap Inc posted its biggest one-day drop on record after the Snapchat parent company warned that Apple Inc’s data collection rules and global supply-chain bottlenecks are weighing on advertising spending. The stock tumbled 27%, wiping out about $32bn of a market value that now sits around $89bn. The cautious outlook cast a shadow over ad-dependent peers, including Google-owner Alphabet Inc, Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Pinterest Inc, which fell between 3% and 5% each. All-together, Snap’s warning erased about $142bn of market value from the company and peers on Friday. Investors are bracing for Snap’s challenges to be felt industrywide, with Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter due to report quarterly results next week. The S&P 500 Index snapped a seven-day streak of gains on Friday. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s comments around rising inflation risk added to investor concern regarding Snap’s impact on technology shares. “You bring those two themes together, and I think that’s spooked the market going into next week with earnings,” Jonestrading chief market strategist Michael O’Rourke said in an interview. “Management almost couldn’t have sounded worse around the effects this is having,” Brad Erickson, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note on Snap. Sticking to his outperform rating on the stock, Erickson said the credibility of the company’s leadership may have been permanently damaged, though he remains bullish on long-term growth prospects. Speaking on a post-earnings call with analysts, chief executive officer Evan Spiegel said data collection rules introduced by Apple have made it difficult for advertisers to measure and manage their ad campaigns. Snap expects adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $135mn to $175mn in the last three months of 2021, much lower than the $299.3mn forecast from Wall Street. Earlier this year, Apple started requiring all apps on its iOS 15 platform to get iPhone users’ permission to be tracked for advertising purposes. Analysts are warning that the impact could be long lasting, while supply-chain snags at Snap’s advertising partners are most likely to be transitory. Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowak said he sees the impact from Apple’s privacy changes hurting Facebook’s revenue by low-to-mid single-digit percentages. He expects Twitter to be weighed down more in the next two years as the changes hurt the micro-blogging company’s “multi-year bull case.” Though Snap could face the worst impact among peers from Apple’s changes, JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth said Facebook’s profile looks similar. For Google, supply bottlenecks are more of a concern, he said.