Investors selling off stocks resulted in the worst quarterly performance in history for some S&P 500 tech companies, including Meta and PayPal, as March came to a close, ending the first quarter of 2022.
The twelve stocks identified by Dow Jones market analysts had a combined loss of just over $494 billion in market cap, which amounts to about a quarter of the nearly $2 trillion value loss from the Nasdaq Composite Index as it reports its worst quarter since March of 2020.
PayPal and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, were joined by Etsy Inc., Ceridian HLM Holding, Xylem Inc., Keysight Technologies Inc., Zoetis Inc., Match Group Inc., Charter Communications Inc., Carrier Global Corp, American Water Works Co. Inc., and Otis Worldwide Corp. in feeling the first-quarter pain.
Leading the pack was the world’s largest social media company, Meta, with a 33.2% decline and a market-cap loss of $317.2 billion. The Dallas Express reported in February that Facebook was facing major dips in stock percentages as, just a few days into the second month of the first quarter, the stock dropped around 26%, causing a $220 billion loss in the company’s market value.
According to an article published by MarketWatch, “Meta stock was slammed by a change in Apple Inc.’s mobile operating system that harmed Facebook advertisers’ ability to track their campaigns. Executives blamed the changes for a holiday-season earnings miss and weak first-quarter sales guidance, leading to huge declines in the stock.”
Etsy stocks finished the quarter with a 43.2% decline and a market-cap loss of $11.97 billion, while PayPal and Minneapolis-based software company Ceridian experienced declines of 37.9% and 34.6%, respectively. Match Group Inc., the parent company of online dating site Match.com, finished the first quarter with a 17.8% decline in stocks and a market-cap loss of $6.43 billion.
MarketWatch reported that concerns about a coronavirus variant early in the year left an uncertain forecast for Match.com, but analysts forecast an upswing in the stock with the onset of warmer weather approaching and case numbers dropping.
Market analysts were more optimistic about a second-quarter start on Friday as stocks closed higher and the S&P 500 rebounded from the ugly first-quarter ending — up about 0.3%
“The major averages spent the day bouncing back and forth across the unchanged line before closing moderately higher,” RTTNews reported for Nasdaq.