(CercleFinance.com) – The New York Stock Exchange ended in sharp decline Thursday evening in a context of great caution following the disappointing performance and forecasts communicated by Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
At the end of the session, the Dow Jones fell 1.45%, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 3.74%.
Investors keep their eyes on corporate results, with the hope that the accounts of listed companies reserve good surprises and support the markets.
Only problem, the latest publications of the tenors of the rating are much worse than expected.
Meta Platforms thus plunged by nearly 26% after having unveiled objectives deemed prudent, in particular due to increased competition from the TikTok application.
The social networking giant Meta unveiled Wednesday evening a net profit down 8% to 10.3 billion dollars for the last quarter of 2021, or 3.67 dollars per share (-5%), with an operating margin in down nine points to 37%.
At current valuation levels, more than $200 billion capitalization has gone up in smoke, the equivalent of a year’s stock market gains.
The results of the major biopharmaceutical groups Merck (-0.6%) and Eli Lilly (-2.4%) also dampened investor enthusiasm.
Merck published adjusted EPS up 84% to $1.80 for the last quarter of 2021, for revenues up 24% to $13.5 billion (+23% at constant exchange rates), up driven in particular by its Keytruda and Gardasil franchises.
Eli Lilly published revenue of $8 billion for the 4th quarter of 2021, up 8% compared to the 4th quarter of 2020. The laboratory announced quarterly adjusted net profit up 8%, at 2. $26 billion, which represents adjusted EPS of $2.49. Over the full year 2021, Eli Lilly recorded revenue of $28.3 billion, up 15% compared to 2020.
To make matters worse, the economic indicators of the day are proving to be quite mixed.
The ISM services index fell to 59.9 last month, a drop of 2.4 points after 62.3 in December, while economists forecast a slightly less pronounced drop around 60.
Factory orders fell 0.4% in December, according to Commerce Department figures.
The weekly registrations for unemployment benefits fell during the week of January 24, to 238,000 against 261,000 a week earlier.
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