& this week's top tech stories
Around this time last year, Facebook – the world’s biggest social media company – decided to change course and rename itself Meta.
Twelve months later, its stock is down 75% and spending on the elusive metaverse is in the tens of billions, with no sign of profits on the horizon.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains unmoved, however, insisting that the payoff will come in the 2030s.
But for now, the company is a shadow of its former self as shareholders desert it in droves. Here are the numbers that tell the story of Meta’s disastrous first year.
$800 billion
The fall in Meta’s market cap since it was rebranded from Facebook in late October 2021. That’s more than the market cap of Tesla, Exxon Mobil and every other company on Earth except Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Saudi Aramco.
$237.23 billion
Meta’s market cap as of November 4, 2022. It was last around that level in mid-2015.
$230 billion
The drop in Meta’s market cap on February 3, 2022 – by far the biggest one-day loss for a US company in history. Its stock tanked 26.4% that day after the company reported its first ever drop in daily user numbers.
$100 billion
The decline in CEO Mark Zuckerbuerg’s personal fortune since the start of 2022. That’s around the net worth of Warren Buffet, the world’s sixth-richest person. Zuckerberg holds a 13% stake in Meta.
500th
Meta’s ranking – dead last – on the list of the S&P 500’s worst performers of 2022. The stock is down more than 73% since the start of the year.
$19.6 billion
Meta’s operating losses from its metaverse project – Reality Labs – since last year. The company reported $10.2 billion in losses from the project in 2021 and $9.4 billion as of the third quarter of 2022. That’s more than the GDP of Georgia (the country, not the US state), which stood at $18.7 billion in 2021.
97.51%
The fall in Meta’s free cash flow, from $12.7 billion at the end of 2021 to $316 million in the third quarter of 2022, as it continues to splurge on Zuck’s pet project.
87,314
The number of employees at Meta as of September 30, a 28% increase year-on-year, according to its third-quarter earnings report.