Underwhelming Revenue Tanks Facebook Stock

Reports of stalled growth have sent Meta reeling.

Reports of stalled growth have sent Meta reeling.

For the fourth quarter, Facebook released its earnings under its new branding, Meta, for the very first time. However, this change was dwarfed by another major development: revenue missed analyst predictions by a long shot. Not only that, but Facebook’s userbase has stalled out, not gaining any new users for the first time in years, and much of the company’s funds are currently steeped in development of “Metaverse” technology.

All of these problems has caused a severe drop in investor confidence, which in turn led to a devastating 23% drop in Facebook’s stock value, a good $210 billion of its market cap, the biggest single-day loss the company has seen since 2018.

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of the primary culprits of their stagnating userbase is the attractiveness of newer social media platforms such as TikTok. “We face a competitor in TikTok that is a lot bigger, so it will take a while to compound and catch up there,” Zuckerberg said on a conference call

When asked about the status of Metaverse development, arguably Facebook’s biggest current pursuit (and biggest gamble), Zuckerberg’s answer didn’t do much to inspire confidence either. “This fully realized vision is still a ways off,” he said. “And although the direction is clear, our path ahead is not yet perfectly defined.”