The stock was down $73.08 (-22.63%) at $249.92 in late afterhours action, setting the Nasdaq and Nasdaq 100 futures up for a tumble.
From Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance:
Facebook’s user growth faltered in the latest quarter, the first stagnation in the social network’s history, stoking concern that Meta Platforms Inc.’s flagship product and core advertising moneymaker has plateaued after years of consistent gains.
The company also gave a disappointing sales forecast for the current period, and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that Meta is facing serious competition for user time and attention, particularly from viral video-sharing app TikTok. The dour outlook and stalled user momentum sent shares down as much as 24% in extended trading, a striking decline for a stock that has posted gains in every year but one since its 2012 IPO.
Zuckerberg said Meta’s rival to TikTok, Reels, is growing quickly, but monetization has been slow, and he asked investors for patience as the product ramps up.
“Over time we think that there is potential for a tremendous amount of overall engagement growth” with Reels, he said on a conference call Wednesday. “We think it’s definitely the right thing to lean into this and push as hard to grow Reels as quickly as possible and not hold on the brakes at all, even though it may create some near-term slower growth than we would have wanted.”
The misses come at a critical juncture for the company, which is fighting regulatory battles on multiple fronts and also trying to justify a costly shift in corporate strategy to bet on the metaverse, Zuckerberg’s vision for an immersive internet that may take years to realize. For the better part of a decade, it has seemed like Facebook would never stop growing. Now young users -- the future consumers of its advertising -- are choosing platforms like TikTok and Google’s YouTube for entertainment and community instead.Rarely, if ever, has Meta been confronted by so many substantial threats at the same time. Aside from user growth woes and intensifying competition, Meta is also contending with a crackdown on targeted advertising by Apple Inc., which it said may trim $10 billion in revenue this year, and cutbacks by advertisers that are paring budgets because of rising costs and supply chain disruptions.
The company, which changed its name to Meta last year to indicate its future direction, also said it will be taking on the META stock ticker in the first half of the year. Shares plunged as low as $244 in late trading, after closing at $323 in New York. The stock, which currently trades under the ticker FB, had declined 4% so far this year through Wednesday’s close.....
....MUCH MORE
People sometimes use the word 'plunge' and you think 'that's not a knife plunge'
This is a plunge
