The biggest threat to Snap: Employees are paid with stock that just dropped 20%, analyst says

One of Snap 's Wall Street critics said he's reasonably positive on the stock in the long term — but Thursday's stock sell-off exposed one of the company's biggest risks.

"I don't think that the company needs to be concerned about that, except for the fact that a lot of employees who work there have been issued significant amounts of [restricted stock units] which are dependent upon a high stock price," said Brian Wieser, senior analyst at Pivotal. "The biggest risk for the company is, 'How do you manage a workforce whose compensation is largely stock-driven, if the stock comes down to earth?'" READ MORE