Shares of Snap plunged -23% during after-hours trading Thursday, after the social media company said its ad business was hurt by changes in Apple’s ad tracking rules. “Our advertising business was disrupted by changes to iOS ad tracking that were broadly rolled out by Apple in June and July,” Snap said in a statement. “While we anticipated some degree of business disruption, the new...

Pinterest shares climbed on Wednesday, and were up nearly +13% for the day., following a report that suggested the company is being considered for a takeover by online payments group PayPal . According to Bloomberg News, PayPal is looking at buying the social media platform, and is in talks for a potential price of $70 a share – which implies Pinterest being valued at around $39 billion. Late...

IAC/InterActive's digital media unit, Dotdash will acquire Meredith Corp. in an all-cash transaction valued at $2.7 billion. The combined entity will be named Dotdash Meredith and will be led by Dotdash CEO Neil Vogel, according to the two companies’ statement. Under the terms of the deal, Dotdash will pay $42.18 a share for Meredith. Meredith is a publisher of magazines such as People,...

Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer is planning to resign his position after a transition period. Schroepfer will transition to become the company's first senior fellow. The social media behemoth mentioned in a statement that it will replace Schroepfer with its head of Facebook Reality Labs Andrew Bosworth in 2022. As CTO, Bosworth will continue to oversee the Facebook Reality...

Total average revenue per paying user rose to $20.88, compared to $18.12.

The company incurred a loss of -6 cents a share in the second quarter, compared with break-even per share a year ago.Analysts expected a break-even per share figure for the latest quarter.

For full year 2021, Bumble is expecting revenue in the range of $752 million to $762 million, higher than consensus forecast of $736.46 million.

Analysts polled by FactSet expected adjusted earnings of 24 cents a share.

Revenue surged +70% year-over-year to $1.31 billion in the quarter, surpassing analysts’ estimate of  $1.28 billion.Zillow’s revenue from the Internet, Media & Technology segment came in at $476.1 million (vs. $280 million a year ago, and compared to analysts’ expected $467 million); revenue from  for its core Premier Agent offering for professionals was $348.8 million (vs. $192 million a year-ago, and compared to analysts’ expected $345 million).

The company’s revenue from its Homes segment was $777.1 million (vs. $454.3 million in the same quarter last year, and $751 million expected by analysts polled by Factset).

Revenue, however, beat expectations.

The online  dating service conglomerate, posted second-quarter earnings of 46 cents a share, compared to the 49 cents a share expected by analysts polled by FactSet.The figure, however, is higher than  36 cents a share during COVID-19 pandemic-induced depression in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue climbed +27% year-over-year to $707.76 million, also exceeding analysts’ forecast of $693.5 million.

Chief Executive Shar Dubey continues to be optimistic about momentum while entering the second half of the year.

Twitter  CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed to investors that Bitcoin will be a “big part” of the company’s future.

Dorsey also emphasized that Bitcoin would have a major role in the company’s future plans on boosting decentralized finance and payments.

Last week, payments services company Square  said that it is building a new business focused on “decentralized financial services” using Bitcoin.

Earlier this year, Dorsey formed a $23.6 million Bitcoin fund with Jay Z and also bought a majority stake in Jay-Z’s TIDAL music service, reflecting his interest in applying blockchain technologies in the music business.

Facebook  shares climbed on Friday, after Credit Suisse analyst Stephen Ju raised his price target on the social media giant’s shares.

Ju  hiked his price target to $480 from $400, while maintaining his outperform rating.

“As Facebook (and the broader online ad industry) continues to benefit from budget recovery for the second quarter, our focus shifts back to offense and product development,” Ju wrote in a commentary.

 “At the time of its last disclosure (the third quarter of 2020), the core Facebook app had 200 million business profiles and 10 million advertisers, while Instagram had 4 million advertisers,” Ju wrote.

“From a near-term tactical perspective, our conversations with advertisers continue to suggest ad budget recovery across most sectors.”

Alphabet  shares climbed on Friday, following price target hikes at Credit Suisse, ahead of second quarter earnings release next week.

Credit Suisse analyst Stephen Ju  boosted his price target on the Google-parent’s shares by 21.5% to $3,350 per share.Ju mentioned the impact of new product launches that will increase the company’s total addressable advertisement market to around $3 trillion on the back of a strategy that targets both larger and small-to-medium sized businesses with real-time inventory listings that can link to its search and map features.

The social media company’s revenue also exceeded estimates.

Snap’s  net loss came in at -10 cents per share for the quarter, compared to the -18 cents per share anticipated by analysts polled by FactSet.The number of daily active users rose +23% year over year to 293 million.

The company launched eight new "Snap Originals" shows and 177 new "Discover Channels.

Twitter  shares climbed in after-hours trading Thursday, following better-than-expected  second-quarter results.

The social media behemoth’s adjusted diluted earnings came in at 35 cents a share, handily beating analysts’ expectations of 7 cents.Net income was 8 cents a share, bouncing back from loss of - $1.75 per share a year ago.

Revenue increased +74% from the year-ago quarter to $1.19 billion compared to analyst consensus of $1.07 billion.

The platform’s average monetizable daily active users in the second quarter was 206 million - up +11% year-over-year and +3% quarter-over-quarter.

For the third quarter, Twitter is expecting revenue to range between $1.22 billion and $1.3 billion .

On Tuesday, the European Union announced that it has started an investigation into whether Alphabet’s  Google has broken EU competition rules.

The European Commission is probing into whether Google is curbing competition by favoring its own online display advertising technology services in the ad-tech supply chain, to the extent of restricting access by third parties to user data for advertising purposes on websites and apps (while reserving such data for its own use). 

EC will also study whether Google's policies on user tracking are in line with fair competition principles.

Social media giant Facebook Inc’s smartwatch launch in 2022 could be its foray into the augmented reality space, according to Ark Invest. According to the investment management firm, Facebook seems to believe that a wrist device will be the interface for augmented reality. In March, Facebook revealed that it is working on soft robotics to build all-day writs-based wearable devices that will...

Photo-sharing app Snapchat reached 500 million monthly active users, parent Snap  announced.

Chief Executive Evan Spiegel said that around 40% of the Snapchat user base is now located outside North America and Europe.

"[Nearly] one of every two smartphone users in the U.S. is on Snapchat," Chief Executive Evan Spiegel said in opening Snap's partner summit, according to Yahoo Finance.

Snapchat launched series of augmented reality tools, including Scan, which allows Snapchatters to match what is seen through the camera to relevant AR experiences on Snapchat.

The company also announced  that it would launch a new app called Story Studio, which has video-editing tools.

Also, Poshmark is partnering with Snap to launch Poshmark Mini, which will be available to Snapchat users in the U.S. in three different ways: Shop Virtual Posh Parties, Shop Poshmark’s Entire Catalogue, and Shop Top-Selling Brands.

 

Facebook  shares rose +5% after-hours trading on Wednesday, as the social media behemoth beat first-quarter earnings expectations.

The company’s net income came in at $3.30 per share, compared with $2.37 per share expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv.  Earnings were $1.71 per share in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue surged +48% year-over-year to $26.17 billion in the quarter, vs. $23.67 billion expected by analysts.

Daily active users (DAUs) of 1.88 billion was close to the 1.89 billion forecast (based on FactSet data).Average revenue per user (ARPU) came in at $9.27 vs. $8.40 forecast by FactSet.

Advertising revenue was $25.44 billion, soaring +46% year-over-year, on the back of a +30% year-over-year increase in the average price per ad and a +12% rise in the number of ads delivered.

 

Earnings were $9.87 a share in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue rose to $55.31 billion, up from $44.16 billion a year ago.

The company’s Google Cloud revenue for the quarter grew +46% year-over-year to $4.05 billion vs. $4.07 billion expected by analysts polled by FactSet.YouTube ads generated  $6.01 billion vs. $5.70 billion, according to StreetAccount.

According to a filing Tuesday, Alphabet’s board approved an additional stock repurchase of up to $50 billion on April 23.

 

Spotify Technology shares got a buy rating from Jefferies, as the latter initiated coverage of the audio streaming company.The analyst also indicated that new technologies are less likely to disrupt Spotify’s business model.

According to Uerkwitz, the company’s shares have substantial long-term opportunity and is trading at a discount to other content platform companies.

Anmuth affirmed his overweight rating on the shares.

Anmuth mentioned that Alphabet is well positioned across ads, clouds, and a number of other key initiatives to both drive and benefit from long-term digital trends.The analyst cited “attractive combination of top-line scale, growth and margins” as factors bolstering the view that valuation is attractive at 27 times the analyst’s 2022 estimated Alphabet GAAP earnings per share, or 22 times 2022 estimated GAAP earnings per share excluding cash and other bets.

According to Anmuth team’s valuation analysis, Alphabet has a market capitalization approaching $2 trillion, or $2,857 per share, which is 25% above where the shares currently trade.

 

Online dating services company Match Group’s  shares got a rating boost from BTIG, citing valuation. Match is the owner of popular dating sites like Tinder, Match.com, and OkCupid.

BTIG analyst Jake Fuller raised his rating on Match to buy from neutral.He also sees upside to second-half 2021 and 2022-2025 numbers due to re-opening tailwinds, new products, the Hyperconnect acquisition and emerging brand/live streaming opportunities.

"The pandemic depressed Tinder ARPU [average revenue per user]," but a rebounding economy will help, the analyst added.