Zuckerberg’s Facebook empire collapsing

Once the world’s sixth largest firm with a valuation of over $1 trillion, Facebook’s parent company Meta finished Thursday’s trading with a value of $565 billion. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the social media giant has tumbled out of the world's 10 largest companies by market value, hammered by its worst monthly stock decline ever.

The stock rout has placed Mark Zuckerberg’s company in 11th place behind Chinese Tencent Holdings. Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) holds the ninth spot. The list of the world's most-valuable companies, ranked by market capitalization, includes Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, and Nvidia. 

Data shows that the value wiped out by the selloff in Meta’s shares exceeds the market caps of all but eight companies in the S&P 500 Index. Meta’s share price is down about 40% year-to-date after the company reported two weeks ago that its social media platform Facebook lost about one million users from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2021. That’s the first such decline for the company in its 18-year history.

Meta’s stock plummeted 26.4% on February 3 after the company released its weaker-than-expected outlook. The $240 billion loss in market capitalization was the largest one-day loss in US corporate history. CEO Mark Zuckerberg's personal net worth is down more than $46 billion from the beginning of the year, he's currently worth $78.8 billion.

Since then, Meta's share price has extended losses, losing another 13% to date. The company has warned that the rest of the year is shaping up to be a choppy one as it deals with “macroeconomic challenges” and continues its long-term strategic shift “towards building the metaverse.”

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