Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) this morning launched "Home," (http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/04/facebook-home-launch/) a family of apps for devices running the Android operating system, at a flashy press event at its Menlo Park, California headquarters. While sentiment about the launch is still shaking out among gadget experts and other tech industry watchers, there has been a positive response from one key demographic: Public market investors.
Facebook's stock (https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:FB) rose steadily this morning as the Home launch event played out after starting at 10 a.m. Pacific Time (http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/04/live-blog-live-from-the-facebook-phone-event/) (1 p.m. Eastern Time.) At the time that the official event and the following Q&A wrapped at 11:00 a.m., Facebook's stock price was $27.04, a solid gain from the $26.57 stock price that it began the event with an hour before. Trading volume was also markedly up during the event, which was available online via live stream (http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/04/live-blog-live-from-the-facebook-phone-event/). And after the event closed, Facebook's stock continued to climb — a half an hour later at 11:30 a.m. PT, the price was hovering steadily around $27.20, and at market close the price settled at $27.06, marking a 3.13 percent gain for the day.
Facebook stock leading up to and during the Home launch Of course, monitoring the stock market is tough, as it is volatile by nature — especially as investors try to suss out what a big new product launch could mean. And Facebook's stock still has a long way to go before it can be considered a stock market success — it's still trading well below the $38 per share price of its initial public offering (http://techcrunch.com/techcrunch.com/2012/05/17/facebook-confirms-ipo-share-price/) back in May 2012 and the opening price of $42.05 it had at its stock market debut.
But Home has had a significantly better reception than Facebook's also much-hyped Graph Search launch back in January, when the company's stock fell more than 3 percent (http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/15/facebook-shares-dip-below-30-again-as-graph-search-fails-to-convince-investors/). We've still got a week until Home actually is available to Android users, so the jury will be out on Home's real success for a while, but as far as Wall Street is concerned this seems to be a good first impression.
Via: TechCrunch