What happened
The Federal Reserve's announcement that it would pump $1.5 trillion into financial markets has done little to calm stocks, which continue to gyrate wildly. The news only led to a temporary spike in the major indexes before selling pressure quickly resumed. Here's where several prominent tech stocks are standing as of 3 p.m. EDT:
- Square (SQ 2.79%): down 13%.
- Fastly (FSLY 4.03%): down 10%.
- Zuora (ZUO 1.04%): down 13%.
- GoDaddy (GDDY 1.54%): down 10%.
- Open Text (OTEX 2.12%): down 10%.
Given the lack of company-specific news, the viral pandemic remains the clear driver of volatility. Investors fear a global recession and are seeking shelter in safer investments like Treasury securities.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Square said this week that it would host its investor day online as a virtual event in order to "accommodate ongoing travel and workplace restrictions." The event is scheduled for March 24. Square's business could be impacted by the outbreak in a couple of ways. Decreased commerce activity would hurt its payments business, while supply chain disruptions in Asia could result in shortages of Square's hardware products like payment terminals, the company warns in regulatory filings. On the last earnings call, CFO Amrita Ahuja said Square was closely monitoring any potential changes in consumer spending.
Unrelated to the coronavirus crisis, Fastly announced today that it had hired two new executives, Nick Rockwell and Laura Thomson, to lead its engineering teams. Rockwell recently served as chief technology officer for The New York Times, while Tomson is joining from Mozilla, which makes the popular Firefox internet browser. Much of Fastly's workforce is already remote but the company is temporarily requiring all employees to work remotely in response to the outbreak.
Zuora is set to report fourth-quarter results and host its related conference call with analysts today, so investors will want to hear commentary from management regarding the potential impacts of the coronavirus. The company's last report was in December, before the outbreak reached global scale.
Like Square, GoDaddy announced yesterday that it was changing the venue of its investor day to an online webcast instead of an in-person event as was originally planned. GoDaddy's investor day is scheduled for April 2. GoDaddy has not discussed the coronavirus pandemic in earnings releases, conference calls, or regulatory filings.
There has not been any specific coronavirus-related news for Open Text recently.
