Meta extends its 3-day stock skid to 8% after warning of an advertising slowdown

• Meta Platforms shares dropped in 3% Thursday despite an earnings beat.
• The Big Tech giant beat analysts' forecasts, but execs warned of a fourth-quarter slowdown in advertising revenues.

Meta Platforms' stock price slipped Thursday, with so-so earnings failing to stop a bad run for the Big Tech giant.

Shares were down 3% shortly after the opening bell as investors reacted to the company's third-quarter report, posted after Wednesday's closing bell.

Meta's earnings-per-share of $4.39 beat Wall Street's forecasts, according to consensus estimates gathered by the London Stock Exchange Group, while the company also logged better-than-expected revenue of $34.2 billion for the three months ending September 30.

But Meta's CFO Susan Li said on a call with analysts that the company had widened its revenue guidance range for the fourth quarter, citing a slowdown in advertising spending and geopolitical instability in the Middle East.

"We have observed softer ads in the beginning of the fourth quarter, correlating with the start of the conflict, which is captured in our Q4 revenue outlook," Li said on the call, referring to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

"It's hard for us to attribute demand softness directly to any specific geopolitical event," she added.

Meta's losses Thursday threaten to extend the tech firm's bad run this week.

The tech giant's shares dropped 5% Monday and Wednesday, with investors fretting about spiking bond yields, the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest-rate hikes, and a slowdown in cloud sales for Big Tech rival Alphabet.

If Meta's losses hold up until the closing bell, its total valuation will plunge by another $23 billion, by Insider's calculations.

The stock has still enjoyed a stellar 2023 so far thanks to investors' enthusiasm about the rise of AI and the expectation that the Federal Reserve could start cutting interest rates this year, having jumped 140% year-to-date.