Facebook shares fall for third straight week
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of
Facebook's (FB) stock traded up 3% to close at $27.10, and briefly was poised to erase the week's losses. But the stock ended the week down 2.2%.
The shares have dropped 29% from the social-media service's initial public offering price of $38, and have yet to end a week in the green. Read story on Facebook and shrinking social-stock valuations.
But the stock's weekly rate of decline has eased.
The stock shed $6.32, or almost 17%, in its first full week of trading. It then gave up $4.19, or 13%, last week. Facebook slid 62 cents this week.
"The risk return for shorts has probably diminished at this point," JMP Securities analyst Mark Harding said in a phone interview.
"We'll probably see some kind of bottoming out and reaching a level where people can get their hands around valuation," he added.
In fact, Facebook got a lift Friday from a comScore blog post, which said data to be released next week shows that Facebook ads are more effective than investors think.
Facebook has been hit with negative reports on the effectiveness of its ads, highlighted by the decision of General Motors (GM) to stop buying advertising on the site.
"People are feeling a bit more encouraged about it," Harding said, referring to the expected data from comScore. "If we have some data points on the effectiveness of the ads, that would counteract some of the more negative news."
In fact, he said, word of the upbeat comScore report turned out to be good news for other social-media stocks.
Shares of
Facebook's stock has struggled ever since the company's controversial IPO. On Friday, CNBC reported that
On Friday, Facebook rolled out its App Center where users can access social apps, which included features for downloading apps to mobile devices.
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