As of Thursday, the social networking giant was the poorest performance in the S&P 500 even though Facebook shares dropped to fresh lows.
The parent company of Facebook has been coping with a slew of issues that have alarmed traders and driven its stock down.
For instance, Meta released disappointing fourth-quarter guidance in October that fell short of analyst forecasts and recorded its second consecutive quarterly sales decline. The looming recession has led companies to cut back on marketing spending, as well as Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy upgrade has continued to have an impact, making it more challenging for the business to track people throughout the Internet. These and other issues are among the reasons Meta gave for the decrease in sales.
In 2022, the price of Meta’s shares dropped by over 73 percent.
Investors also seem worried about Meta’s costly venture into creating the metaverse, the virtual universe that users of virtual reality or augmented reality headsets may enter. Meta is betting that the metaverse will be the next big thing in technology. If the business can gain a head start on creating the foundational technologies, it will solidify its position as a pioneer in the field.
Reality Labs business
Meta’s Reality Labs business section, which is in charge of its VR and AR endeavors, has already lost $9.4 billion in 2022, indicating that creating the metaverse is costly. The company predicted that these losses “would rise rapidly year after year.”
To raise total business operating income over the long term, Meta stated in October that it expects to speed up Reality Labs investments starting in 2023.
