Wall Street analysts demand assurances from Zuckerberg on Facebook sales

London, July 22 (ANI): Wall Street analysts have demanded an assurance from Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg that he is fully committed to driving the sales and profits of the social networking site, as the firm prepares to release its first results as a public company this week.

The 23pc slump in Facebook's share prices since its 104 billion dollar flotation in May has left investors nervous, following which they have demanded Zuckerberg to make an appearance on the conference call with Wall Street analysts, which Facebook would hold after the release of its Q2 results on Thursday.

"If they want to present themselves as a company that sees investors as stakeholders, then at least a brief introduction [from Mr Zuckerberg] would be welcome. You want to be reassured that they respect investors," The Telegraph quoted Brian Weiser, an analyst in New York at Pivotal Research, as saying.

According to the paper, Facebook, whose much-hyped initial public offering was marred by technical glitches on its opening day on the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York, faced accusations that the company and its advisers had selectively disclosed bad news about the outlook for 2012, before the shares were eventually sold for 38 dollars each on May 17, which the firm and its advisers had vehemently denied.

Analysts at Nomura believe that Facebook needs to tread a fine line between increasing revenues without alienating the users around which it has built the company, and the firm could do this is by charging companies for the pages they have on the site. Coca-Cola currently has the most popular corporate page with 41.9 million "likes" followed by Walt Disney with 35.7 million, the paper said.

Analysts also said that Facebook's debut quarterly results and conference call will be critical in revealing how much detailed information the historically private company is prepared to share with investors.

"They [ Facebook] must reinforce with investors that they care about driving revenues. I think clearly they do care," Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles said. (ANI)