Monday wasn’t kind to some of the biggest tech companies on Wall Street, with Netflix, Snap and Facebook all dropping more than 3 percent on the day.
Entering the day touching all-time highs, Facebook was hit nearly 5 percent, closing at $162.66 amid fears over the company’s scrapped plan to issue non-voting shares of stock. The new “Class C” shares would’ve allowed CEO Mark Zuckerberg to maintain voting control over the company, even as he decides to sell off shares to fund his charity. Zuckerberg said on Friday he was still planning on selling 35-75 million Facebook shares — or about $12 billion worth of stock — “in the next 18 months.” Wall Street appears spooked by the axed plan, along with growing concerns Russian agents were spreading fake news on the platform before and after the 2016 election.
Following better-than-expected user growth last quarter, Netflix had been on a major run in the last month, jumping about $20 to $188 a share. But Fox’s decision on Monday to pull more of its content off competing streaming services was a blow to Netflix, with the company falling 4.77 percent to $178.42 a share.
Premiere shows like FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson” will remain on Netflix, but the move hints at future content issues for the streaming giant; Netflix will have to continue shelling out for its own original shows to fill the void. The move echoed Disney’s decision last month to pull its content from Netflix by 2019 and start its own service.
As for Snap, the company has been on a losing streak since closing at $15.25 on Friday, Sept. 15. Monday continued that trend, with the company falling more than 3.5 percent and closing at $13.20 a share. Its bedrock app, Snapchat, is under fire from Instagram, as it continues to add users at a blistering pace. Instagram Stories — its Snapchat copycat feature — now boasts 500 million daily active users, easily lapping Snapchat’s 173 million DAUs.