(Bloomberg) -- Reddit Inc. shares slumped in late trading after fourth-quarter user growth missed Wall Street’s expectations, a sign the newly public company is struggling to keep up with larger digital advertising peers Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. 

The company averaged 101.7 million daily active unique visitors in the period, according to a statement Wednesday. That fell short of analysts’ average projection of 103.8 million.

Reddit said user growth slowed after Google made a change to its algorithm that impacted search traffic. The forum-based site has benefited from deals that surface Reddit results in search engines, including Google and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Over the past few years, Google has accounted for as much as 50% of Reddit’s traffic in a single day, making the social media site susceptible to changes in Google’s search engine.

The shares slid more than 15% in extended trading following the report. Reddit’s stock has increased more than sixfold since it went public last March, and had already jumped more than 30% this year, significantly outpacing the broader market. It’s been one of the best performing stocks to go public since the market for IPOs began to slow in 2022. 

Sales in the holiday quarter, meantime, increased 71% to $427.7 million for the period ended in December. That surpassed the $405 million analysts had expected on average, according to a Bloomberg survey. The company forecast sales of $360 million to $370 million in the current quarter, exceeding the average analyst estimate of $359 million.

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