Facebook owner Meta set for $195 billion wipeout, largest in market history

Facebook’s parent reported a 24% drop in US trading on Thursday due to poor earnings results, keeping it on track to wipe out more than $200 billion.

This is the biggest drop in market value for any US company at current levels. But there is no certainty that losses will occur, especially given the recent volatility that has whipped up technology stocks. The market has jumped wildly in recent weeks, with traders sometimes buying and selling during the last hours of the trading day.

Still, analysts were bleak in their assessment, pointing out that Meta faces stiff competition from rivals like TikTok and revenues were much lower than expected. Michael Nathanson, an analyst at brokerage Moffett Nathanson, titled his note “Facebook: The Beginning of the End?”

“These cuts run deep,” he wrote. The results were “a headline grabber and not in a good way.”

The sheer size of Facebook’s collapse shows how tech companies have ballooned in size to become giants with unprecedented market power, and the drama that can lead to stumbling blocks.

Another way to show the decline: Meta’s decline would be higher than the S&P 500 members’ market cap of around 470.

Meta slumps with target on TikTok Threat: Street Wrap

Yusuf Squally, an analyst at Truist Securities, wrote that Meta “finds itself in the middle of a perfect storm”.

Twitter Inc., Snap Inc. and Pinterest Inc. All traded lower, putting pressure on the Nasdaq 100 index. As of 10:13 am in New York, Meta was traded at $245.72, which was close to $323 on Wednesday.

Meta’s market cap as of last close was approximately $900 billion. The company forms one of the original fang cohort of tech megacaps, which includes Google’s parent Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Apple Inc.

This isn’t the first time meta stocks have fallen dramatically. The stock declined 19% in July 2018 due to a slowdown in user growth, which translates to a roughly $120 billion drop in market capitalization. At the time, it set a record for the largest loss of value in a single day for a US-traded company.

“We expect the company to kitchen-sink the outlook,” said Shyam Patil, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group.

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed.