Shaken Markets Bring Down Public Tech Shares As Some Recent IPOs Set New Record Lows
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If you work for a tech company, you are probably poorer today than you were yesterday.
In the midst of a broader selloff, technology as an industry managed a roughly flat performance, as measured by Google Finance’s tech category. However, among the firms that we discuss and cover the most here at TechCrunch, things were a bit more rough.
We recently published a short piece of analysis, digging into the performance of a few dozen public tech firms, stratified by their age, and IPO recency. The numbers were rough.
What follows is the per-share performance of those companies today and today only:
Recent IPOs
Percent change, today:
- New Relic: -0.95 percent
- Etsy: -1.88 percent
- Alibaba: -1.95 percent
- Shopify: -3.41 percent
- Arista Networks: -3.85 percent
- Hubspot: -4.10 percent
- Box: -4.30 percent
- GoPro: -6.22 percent
- Castlight Health: -6.43 percent
- MobileIron: -7.54 percent
Adolescents
Percent change, today:
- Pandora: -2.68 percent
- Twitter: -2.73 percent
- LinkedIn: -2.95 percent
- Yelp: -3.62 percent
- Groupon: -4.67 percent
- Netflix: -8.03 percent
Where Your Parents Worked
Percent change, today:
- Yahoo: -1.99 percent
- Amazon: -3.19 percent
- Google: -3.31 percent
- IBM: -3.52 percent
- Microsoft: -3.91 percent
- Apple: -4.47 percent
What It May Mean
Shares down in a down market? I can hear your shock from here. Of course it isn’t surprising that the value of public tech companies eased in the face of rough global conditions, but there is more in that bucket of numbers than just obvious trend-following.
- MobileIron’s weakness is becoming stunning. In our last entry of this sort, the mobile device management shop was down the second most of any firm discussed, beating only Yelp in declines from its 52-week hike. Public at $9, now trading at $3.80, the company is a cautionary tale that doesn’t seem set for a plot change in the near future.
- The carnage at Castlight Health is tough, but when you consider how far down shares in the firm have come, it’s even more impressively bad. Off an all-time high of more than $40, Castlight is now under the $5 mark. It’s 52-week high of just over $15 gives you all the more perspective.
- Box’s micro rally following prior lows is over, and the firm’s decline is still apace.
Summing quickly, it seems that investor sentiment has lowered further when it comes to younger, public SaaS shops. That likely has the precise forward-IPO impact that you are currently imagining.
- Netflix’s decline today comes on the heels of a rebound that brought it nearly back up to record highs. So, while the percent decline it exhibited today is jugular, in context it’s a bit more like high-VIX profit taking.
- Any Port In A Storm, but also The Bigger The Ship, The Smaller The Waves Suck. Or something like that. The large cap companies we have our eye on took less damage today.
- Apple’s declines are arguably a proxy for the current weakness in the Chinese market, and not much else. It’s still hard to feel poorly for the richest and most valuable company in the world.
And finally, look at all that red. That none of our previously selected firms could manage a gain today is telling. Yes, things are weak in the markets, but it seems that for tech, weakness is also an intra-issue.
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