At the close of Wall Street, Meta lost 26.4%, a loss that burned over $ 250 billion of its capitalization. This is one of the biggest losses in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.
To weigh on the performance of the company that controls Facebook, the decline in profits in the fourth quarter of 2021 and the loss of one million Fb users (the first in 18 years), as well as the disappointing forecasts for the current year. Marc Zuckerberg’s digital giant closed the last three months of last year with revenues of $ 33.67 billion (compared to $ 28.07 billion a year earlier and in line with his forecasts) but recorded a net profit of 10.29 billion dollars (-8%), below analysts’ expectations.
For the current quarter, Meta expects revenues between 27 and 29 billion dollars, while analysts expected a figure of around 34-35 billion: this would be the weakest growth in its history .
Results that had made the stock lose more than 20% in after-hours trading. But that the next day they had the effect of an earthquake on the stock market, pulverizing in one session about 215 billion dollars of capitalization, one of the largest losses in the history of Wall Street (comparable to the New Zealand economy), and depressing also the Nasdaq (under 2%).
Zuckerberg, whose fortune is estimated at $ 113 billion, has taken a severe hit, virtually losing about $ 28 billion.
Meta’s leaders believe that the main cause of the sudden slowdown is the new policy inaugurated last April by Apple, which changed the software of the iPhones to ask users if they want to be tracked.
Most of them say no, by preventing Meta from selling personalized advertising according to the tastes and habits of consumers, which until now had made the fortune of the company. Chief Financial Officer David Wehner estimates Apple’s policy change will cost more than $ 10 billion in lost sales in 2022, or roughly 8% of last year’s total revenue.
The new privacy launched by Tim Cook also penalized other companies, such as Spotify (which lost $ 44.6 million in the fourth quarter) and some video game companies such as Zynga, but not Twitter, which does not base its business on targeted advertising. . Neither does Google, which Wehner believes would be treated differently from Apple.
Investors are worried about the loss of one million global daily Facebook users in the last quarter of 2021, after a steady growth of 18 years. The fault of the competition, in particular of TikTok, in rapid rise, according to Meta, which to counter the Chinese app has launched Reels, a short video format on Instagram that however generates lower remuneration rates than the classic Instagram formats.
Zuckerberg now hopes for the ‘metaverse’, considered the future of the internet in Silicon Valley: a parallel universe where the public will use augmented or virtual reality glasses to interact, work or have fun. But for now it has cost him tens of billions of dollars to invest in the Facebook Reality Labs subsidiary and the results are beyond.
