Facebook s Stock Plunges After Profit Declines – WSJ

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. startled investors with a sharper-than-expected decline in profits and a gloomy outlook in its first earnings report since Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg outlined a pivot to the metaverse.

Meta shares plunged after the results were announced, dropping more than 20%. If shares dropped that much when trading opens on Thursday, it would wipe more than $175 billion from the tech giant s market capitalization.

The company said it expected revenue growth to slow because users were spending less time on its more lucrative services. Meta cited inflation as a weight on advertiser spending and estimated that ad-tracking changes introduced by Apple Inc. last year would cost Meta some $10 billion this year.

Meta also lost about a million daily users globally and stagnated in the U.S. and Canada, two of the company s most profitable markets, the results show.

via www.wsj.com