There is no joy at Joyy (NASDAQ:YY) today, as the social media stock’s earnings reveal proved a grave disappointment to investors. The disappointment was sufficient to send Joyy down substantially in Wednesday afternoon trading.
Joyy’s problem wasn’t its current quarterly results but rather the guidance it offered going forward. Joyy offered up earnings per share of $0.64, which handily beat analyst projections calling for $0.37 per share. Revenue also beat, though much more narrowly, coming in at $583.6 million against projections that looked for $561.6 million. However, even revenue disappointed somewhat, falling 6.4% against the same time last year. Only one of Joyy’s properties, Bigo Live, offered an increase in average monthly active users. Likee and Hago both declined.
Joyy’s guidance, though, was a bigger problem. Joyy projected revenue between $520 million and $541 million. Not bad, except that analysts were looking for $576 million. That’s hitting Joyy hard today, though Joyy does have some reason behind its disappointing guidance. The guidance reflects not only macroeconomic troubles—and the decline in user spending that comes with them—but also some plans to modify its operations and give its “core global businesses” extra potential via resource infusion.
Joyy doesn’t have a lot of analyst pull yet, but the analysts that are in on the action have a positive view of the stock. With three Buy ratings and one Hold, Joyy stock is considered a Strong Buy by analyst consensus. In addition, its average price target of $42.25 implies 70.57% upside potential.
