Facebook Gains, Beating Peers, After Crypto, Advertising Reports

A group of payments and other companies, including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber, agreed to invest about $10 million each in a consortium to oversee the digital coin Facebook plans to unveil next week, the Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday. Separately, the Wall Street Journal also reported Facebook plans to step up its marketing spending in a shift in its consumer-facing advertising strategy. Facebook shares climbed as much as 2.5% to $181.84 at 9:35 a.m. in New York. Read More...

(Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. gained as much as 2.5%, making it one of the few tech names moving higher in early Friday trading, after reports that it’s making progress toward its cryptocurrency ambitions.

A group of payments and other companies, including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber, agreed to invest about $10 million each in a consortium to oversee the digital coin Facebook plans to unveil next week, the Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday. The social-media giant has also hired a U.K. bank lobbyist as its director of public policy in London, the Financial Times said.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal also reported Facebook plans to step up its marketing spending in a shift in its consumer-facing advertising strategy.

Facebook shares climbed as much as 2.5% to $181.84 at 9:35 a.m. in New York. It was the best-performing stock in the Nasdaq 100 Index, which fell 0.7% as concerns over semiconductor demand weighed on the benchmark.

(Updates share performance in first, last paragraphs.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Courtney Dentch in New York at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Nagi at [email protected]

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