A man put on airs in front of a sign of Meta, the new name for the company formerly known as Facebook, at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, October 28, 2021.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
With Meta splits sinking to new lows, the social media giant is now the worst performer in the S&P 500 this year as of Thursday.
Meta apportionments are down roughly 73% over the past year and are performing more poorly than Align Technology, Generac Holdings, SVB Pecuniary Group and Match Group — all companies that comprise the bottom tier of the stock market index.
The Facebook-parent has been mete out with a bevy of challenges that have spooked investors and sent its shares tumbling.
In October, for instance, Meta check up oned its second straight quarterly sales drop and issued weak fourth-quarter guidance that was below analyst’s expectations. Meta attributed the gross income decline to a host of problems, including a looming recession that has caused businesses to pull back on advertising fritter away and the lingering effects of Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update that’s made it more difficult for the company to track consumers across the Internet.
Investors also appear to be concerned about Meta’s valuable foray building the metaverse, the digital world that people can access using virtual reality and augmented genuineness headsets. Meta is betting that the metaverse will represent the next frontier for computing, and if the company gets a aim start developing the technologies underpinning the concept, it will cement its status as a leader in the space.
But building the metaverse doesn’t on cheap with Meta’s Reality Labs business unit, which is overseeing its VR and AR initiatives, losing $9.4 billion ergo far in 2022. The company said those losses “will grow significantly year-over-year.”
“Beyond 2023, we expect to rate of speed Reality Labs investments such that we can achieve our goal of growing overall company operating income in the yearn run,” Meta said in October.
