Meta Platforms went down in history on Thursday for the biggest one-day crash in the stock market.
After the Facebook owner reported missed quarterly earnings and a slowly shrinking user base on Wednesday, shares have declined some 26%. The company’s stock has also lost about $230 billion in market value since Wednesday’s close, which stands as the biggest wipeout in market value for any U.S. company.
The markets overall have been volatile in the last few weeks, and the tech sector in particular saw some dips across the board this last month.
Twitter, Snap and Pinterest have all been trading lower, and Meta was trading at $237.76 when the market closed on Thursday. Meta’s market cap was previously at around $900 billion.
Facebook parent company Meta met revenue expectations but missed EPS projections in its Q4 earnings on Wednesday. The social giant’s quarterly revenue came in at $33.67 billion, meeting analyst expectations of $33.41 billion. The company, which rebranded as Meta last October, reported a revenue of $29 billion last quarter, which was on par with analyst expectations last year. After seeing a pandemic boost in online activity throughout 2020, its revenue and earnings growth is beginning to slow down.
User growth on Facebook this quarter was stagnant at 2.91 million monthly active users, compared to 2.9 million users reported last quarter — representing only an increase of 4% year-over-year. The platform’s daily active users declined from the previous quarter for the first time, dropping from 1.930 billion to 1.929 billion globally.