Facebook, now known as Meta, is the world’s largest social media company and one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street. However, after releasing less-than-stellar earning reports on Wednesday, the stock dropped around 26% on Thursday’s open, Yahoo Finance data shows.
The plummet will knock more than $220 billion off Meta’s market value, putting Meta on track to face the largest corporate stock loss in U.S. history. Facebook, which usually trades steadily upwards, dropped as Wall Street became less confident in the huge Metaverse investment.
The company logged significant expenses to develop the virtual Metaverse and faced increased competition from other social media such as TikTok. Due to this, Meta stock traded at slightly under $250 on Thursday, AP writes.
Facebook began to transition into Meta in mid-2021 when Zuckerberg introduced the concept of the Metaverse. The Metaverse would be akin to a virtual reality social network, with opportunities for jobs, recreation, etc., to be conducted through a headset.
Consequently, such a giant step in Facebook’s metamorphosis comes with an increase in expenses and risk for the company. Since 2009, Facebook has seen massive gains in revenue while keeping costs relatively low.
Recently Meta threw $10 billion into the development of their Reality Labs, which is responsible for the headsets and software for their experimental Metaverse. This has caused some investors to back off, and the newest earnings report only further reinforces fears that Facebook is not profiting as usual.
“Although our direction is clear, it seems that our path ahead is not quite perfectly defined,” Mark Zuckerberg said in the earning call Wednesday.
Facebook spokesperson Ryan Moore told BuzzFeed News the company doesn’t comment on day-to-day stock movement.
Not only is the Metaverse a monumental undertaking, but Facebook itself has also seen better days. According to the quarterly report, the Facebook networking app lost around 500,000 users since last quarter. This could be why Meta is investing so heavily in its Metaverse and more new-age apps such as Instagram, whose “reels” mirror major competitor TikTok.
But why is Facebook, the largest and most successful social network of all time, suddenly experiencing stagnation? Meta blames new Apple policies, which now ask Facebook’s 2.89 billion users whether or not they consent to Facebook tracking their information.
“Apple may say that they’re doing this to help people, but the moves clearly track their competitive interests,” Zuckerberg said in a January 2021 earnings call before Apple implemented the change with the rollout of iOS14. Facebook makes a considerable portion of its money from targeted advertising, in which it will curate specific advertisements for each user.
According to the New York Times, Meta said on Wednesday that the Apple policy will cost Meta $10 billion in the new year. Unfortunately for Meta, Apple doesn’t seem keen on backing down on their privacy changes. Apple CEO Tim Cook has stated the company believes “users should have the choice over the data that is being collected about them and how it’s used.”
