Spotify stock suffers ahead of Q3 earnings call

Spotify’s rollercoaster ride on the New York Stock Exchange has officially hit a trough, as the streaming giant’s stock price slips close to an all-time low.

It’s been a wretched time for tech stocks, so much so the team preparing the Tencent Music Entertainment flotation hit the handbrake, and entered a waiting game for calmer waters.

Spotify, the biggest name in music streaming, is feeling the force of the downturn as its stockprice on Monday slipped to at an all-time day-close of $139.11, having dipped to $137.01 the day’s trading. That’s well down on Spotify’s $165.90 per-share price on its first day of public life back in April 3, and it feels like a lifetime away from its record high of $198.99, reached during intraday trading in late July.

In basic terms, volatility in global markets has stripped out about $10 billion of Spotify’s market cap in the space of three months. Investing in tech was never for the faint-hearted.

Investors and shareholders will hope the stock price rallies when Daniel Ek and Co. present Spotify’s third-quarter performance in an earnings call this Thursday. For its second quarter, Spotify boasted 180 million monthly active users, with 83 million of those paid-subscribers, up 30% and 40% respectively.

Total revenue for the period was €1.273 billion ($2 billion), up 26% year-on- year, while posting operating losses of €90 million ($144 million), some 7% of all revenue. Prognosticators at S&P Global Market Intelligence are tipping Thursday’s update to show a slight rise in revenues and, of course, a expanding subscriber base.

It’s no time to panic, analysts say. Indeed, Morgan Stanley has remained bullish on Spotify, maintaining an “overweight” rating on stock in a research note issued last week based on the large, and growing, global market for streaming music.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.