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Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, is on pace for what would be the worst trading day in its history as a public company.
The company's shares were down as much as 26 per cent as of midday Thursday in the US (early Friday morning AEDT), shaving off about US$225 billion ($315.24 million) from its market value, after a rough earnings report released after trading hours on Wednesday.
Not only did Meta report a rare and worse-than-expected profit decline during the final three months of last year, it laid out a series of challenges to its core advertising business and revealed for the first time just how much money it's losing on its shift to the metaverse.
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The company also reported a slight-but-striking decline in daily active Facebook users in the US and Canada from the prior quarter.
The eye-popping drop in value is a reminder of just how massive the now-US$676 billion ($947.12 billion) tech giant really is. Meta's market cap has now declined by an amount that is greater than the total valuation of most public companies.
The roughly US$225 billion in lost market value is nearly equal to the total market cap of Oracle, the 32nd largest company in the S&P 500, as of Wednesday's close.
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Translation: Only 31 public companies are worth more than the amount that has been shaved off Meta's market cap since Thursday's open.
It's also a tough day for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is by far the company's largest individual shareholder. Zuckerberg owned more than 398 million Meta shares, or 14.2 per cent of the company's total outstanding shares, according to an SEC filing from February 2021, the most recent filing available.
As Meta's share price plummeted Thursday, the value of Zuckerberg's stake in the company dropped by around US$30 billion ($42.03 billion).
Source: 9News
