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cageymaru
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Snapchat's parent company Snap was the darling of Wall Street when its IPO debuted in March 2017. Now the company faces issues with a revolving user base that engages with its content less, struggles to sell advertising on the platform, and a general lack of content that interests its customers. Wall Street analysts are now calling for the company to go private as Snap has "shed $20 billion in market capitalization" since its IPO. Other analysts are less positive about the social media company's chances and suggest that buying Snap stock at its all-time low is like playing the lottery. "If you do want to play it as a lottery ticket, you can do it that way. The problem is with lottery tickets, they can pay you a lot of money if you hit them, but more time often than not, you lose 100 percent of your money, and you have to be very careful. So on a technical basis it's almost unmarketable, and you really have to look at it on the fundamental basis and see how much cash they have on hand if they can really survive," Maley said.
"The data we look at is showing a widening user base, although one which is collectively reducing its time on the platform," said Brian Wieser, a senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, in an email to CNBC. "Our take is that it is not too late for management to find ways to reverse recent usage trends and generally improve monetization regardless of those usage trends. With ongoing experimentation, we have some faith that they should be able to do both." "At the same time, if they are unable to do so in the near term, the company could become an attractive candidate to go private with the stock's price at current levels," Wieser added.
"The data we look at is showing a widening user base, although one which is collectively reducing its time on the platform," said Brian Wieser, a senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, in an email to CNBC. "Our take is that it is not too late for management to find ways to reverse recent usage trends and generally improve monetization regardless of those usage trends. With ongoing experimentation, we have some faith that they should be able to do both." "At the same time, if they are unable to do so in the near term, the company could become an attractive candidate to go private with the stock's price at current levels," Wieser added.
