The drop is due to the fact that Facebook had its first reduction in daily users in history. Mark Zuckerberg ‘s fortune also fell $28 billion.
The parent company of Facebook , Meta , suffered a brutal fall of 24% this Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, which represents a loss of 200,000 million dollars of the group’s market capitalization, something never seen by Mark Zuckerberg ‘s company .
On Wednesday after the close, the social media giant announced that it lost users in North America for the first time in its history , a drop in its profit in the fourth quarter of 2021 and a slowing growth outlook for the first of 2022, which disappointed analysts.
Facebook alone lost a million daily users, something unprecedented for the social network that has known, in its 18 years of existence, to always attract new users.
At 4:15 p.m. GMT, the Meta share , which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger , lost 24.47% to settle at $243.97, weighing heavily on the Nasdaq index, which fell -1.90%.
While the share price sank, the capitalization of Facebook , valued at 879,000 million dollars at the close of the previous day, suffered a phenomenal loss on Thursday, the most important in the history of Wall Street , melting at least 200,000 million dollars in one session.
“200 billion (dollars) is more than the combined capitalization of 452 S&P 500 companies,” said Gregori Volokhine, president of Meeschaert Financial Services.
The fortune of the boss of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, estimated at 113,000 million dollars, also suffered a severe cut of almost 28,000 million dollars.
The founder and president of Facebook had spoken about competition from other platforms, even mentioning TikTok.
Chance?
With a turnover of 33,670 million dollars, Meta had a net profit of 10,300 million dollars in the fourth quarter, that is, 8% less than in the same period of the previous year.
And for the first quarter of 2022 the group forecasts the lowest growth in its history.
Facebook ‘s disappointing projections come at a time when the stock market has been very volatile since the beginning of the year, while the Federal Reserve (central bank of the United States, Fed) announced that it will soon raise interest rates.
Technology stocks, which are highly sensitive to interest rates as they affect future profits, have suffered losses since January.
Outside of Facebook, other Nasdaq fetish stocks, which rose in value during the pandemic, have been violently punished in recent weeks by the market.
This is the case of Netflix, which lost almost 22% in the session on January 21, virtually erasing 40,000 million dollars of valuation after having announced weak growth forecasts.
Other investors saw in this fall an opportunity to make a good deal: “We do not believe that the market reaction is justified and we think that Meta ‘s action is now an attractive investment opportunity,” said Ali Mogharabi, an analyst at Morningstar. (AFP)
