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- Meta shares slumped nearly 20% in after-hours trade to $104.30 on Wednesday.
- That slashed $67 billion off Meta’s market value, which was already down half a trillion this year, per Reuters.
- The drop in Meta’s share price this year has shaved off 61% off Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth.
Wall Street has been hammering the shares of Meta Platforms in after-hours trade on Wednesday after the company reported its second straight quarterly revenue decline. The share price slide is also chipping a chunk off CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s rapidly shrinking fortune.
Following Wednesday’s earnings announcement, Meta shares slumped nearly 20% in after-hours trade to $104.30. The slump wiped $67 billion off Meta’s market capitalization, according to Reuters, extending a loss of almost half a trillion dollars this year alone.
Zuckerberg has already seen his wealth slump by 61% this year as of Wednesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Most of the billionaire’s wealth comes from a 13% stake in Meta.
Zuckerberg is now worth $48.9 billion, meaning he’s still the 23rd-richest person in the world, according to the index. He started 2022 with a $125 billion fortune, but that dwindled over the year due to the slide in Meta’s share price, which has fallen nearly 70% so far this year.
On Wednesday, Meta — which owns social-networking platform Facebook — posted a 4% revenue decline in the third quarter of 2022 that followed its first-ever revenue drop of 0.9% in the prior quarter. It also expects its metaverse unit to continue losing money in 2023, the tech giant said in a press release.
“An increase in competition from China’s TikTok and changes to Apple’s new iPhone privacy measures, along with a broader slowdown in ad spending are seen dampening the company’s sales,” wrote Thomas Westwater, an analyst at DailyFX and IG, an online trading platform. However, the metaverse is likely “the most potent headwind” to Meta’s share price, he added.
Investors are wary of Zuckerberg’s relentless push into the metaverse. Brad Gerstner, the CEO of Altimeter Capital, published an open letter to Zuckerberg and Meta’s board of directors on Monday, calling on the tech giant to focus on its core, profit-generating businesses instead.
Meta told Insider the company has “no comment on stock volatility.”
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