META Stock Dips Premarket After Q2 Report: Meta’s Forecast Miss Has Investors Worried, Retail Turns More Bearish

• Meta said that it’s evaluating various approaches for its cloud business, indicating a measured approach to the new business.
• Meta’s third-quarter forecast came in below expectations, causing the stock to plummet overnight.
• Stocktwits sentiment for META dipped lower in the ‘bearish’ zone.

Meta Platforms shares fell more than 9% in early premarket trading on Thursday after the company issued a weaker-than-expected forecast for the current quarter and signaled a measured approach to expanding its cloud business.

The drop follows nine straight losing sessions—the worst decline streak in Meta’s history as a public company. Retail traders on Stocktwits debated whether the latest pullback presents a buying opportunity or marks the beginning of a broader selloff, with sentiment appearing to tilt toward the latter.

The retail sentiment for META dipped further into the ‘bearish’ territory, even as message volume for the ticker soared.

“META Could be the most over valued stock on the entire market. This Zuck guy believe he could take  over control of people's lives with a virtual world and a brick on your head,” said a trader.

Another wrote: “$528 open? Should be down 25-30% after those horrific numbers.”

Meta’s Q2 Recap

Meta’s third-quarter forecast came in below expectations, causing the stock to plummet overnight.

The company said it expects third-quarter revenue of between $61 billion and $64 billion, which is below analysts’ expectation of $63.15 billion. Earnings per share of $6.18 fell short of the $7.4 anticipated by analysts.

Meta narrowed its full-year capital expenditure outlook to between $130 billion and $145 billion, raising the bottom end of its previous forecast.

The company reported adjusted profit of $6.18 per share on revenue of $60.80 billion for the second quarter, beating analysts’ estimates on both counts.

META’s Cloud Business Plan

Meanwhile, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that the company is evaluating how it would sell cloud capacity to external customers, suggesting that Meta would move slowly and deliberately for the new business venture.

“We're getting a lot of offers for compute at a significant premium over what we paid for it,” Zuckerberg said on the post-earnings call on Wednesday.

"The question in thinking about this is we believe that there will continue to be a significantly higher margin on selling intelligence rather than selling compute directly… It would be foolish to basically just sell all of the compute and take a short-term profit,” he said.

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