Stock Market Today, May 7: Fastly Shares Plunge After Record Q1 Results Fail to Ease Growth Concerns

Fastly (NASDAQ:FSLY), a real-time content delivery network provider, closed Thursday at $19.50, down 38.23%. The stock sank after record Q1 results and raised 2026 guidance failed to ease concerns about slowing core networking services growth. Trading volume reached 47.1 million shares, about 208% above its three-month average of 15.3 million shares. Fastly IPO'd in 2019 and has fallen 19% since going public.How the markets moved todayThe S&P 500 slipped 0.38% to 7,337, while the Nasdaq Composite eased 0.13% to finish at 25,806. Industry peers Akamai Technologies closed at $116.69 (-4.34%) and Cloudflare ended at $257.05 (+3.40%), underscoring mixed reactions to recent earnings.What this means for investorsFastly grew sales by 20% in Q1 and delivered profitability on an adjusted EPS basis, beating Wall Street’s estimates. However, while it raised 2026 guidance to include 15% sales growth, the market sold the stock off on the prospect that sales growth would decelerate, and Fastly’s core Network Services segment grew revenue by only 11%.While this deceleration was disappointing, management noted this 11% growth was still double the market’s rate. Meanwhile, its nascent Security and Compute units -- which account for roughly one-fourth of Fastly’s sales now -- delivered revenue growth of 67% and 47%, respectively.However, trading at 71 times forward earnings after its stock tripled over the last year, I’m just going to watch Fastly for now, especially as management believes its infrastructure capex (as a percentage of revenue) will more than double in 2026. Should you buy stock in Fastly right now? Before you buy stock in Fastly, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Fastly wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $476,034!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,274,109!* Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 974% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 206% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 7, 2026. Josh Kohn-Lindquist has positions in Cloudflare. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Cloudflare and Fastly. The Motley Fool recommends Akamai Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.