Yesterday, Meta Platforms (FB) reported earnings. In the report, the company noted a sequential rise in both daily and monthly active users in every region apart from Europe, which can be attributed to the effects of the war in Ukraine. This gave investors a sigh of relief, sending shares up over 14% in premarket trading.

FB has gapped higher by 5%+ in reaction to earnings fourteen times since its IPO. Historically, when this occurs, the stock’s performance from the open and close has been modestly positive, and booking gains 57% of the time. The average performance was a gain of 64 basis points (median: 80 bps). The worst intraday performance came in 2014 when the stock traded down by 2.0% percentage points intraday after gapping up 16.05%. On the other hand, the best intraday performance in these time periods occurred in 2018, when the stock gained 4.5% after gapping up 6.0% at the open.

Today marks the fourth-best opening gap since FB went public. This is particularly interesting, as the y/y revenue growth rate in this quarter was the slowest seen since the company went public in 2012. Notably, the opening gap does not seem to be a determining factor for the opening to close performance. As you can see from the chart below, only 3.9% of the variation in the open to close performance can be explained by the size of the opening gap (for 5%+ opening gap gains on earnings).