Sina Science and Technology News On the morning of November 4, Beijing time, it was reported that as Meta's share price fell to a new low, as of Thursday, the social media giant now became the worst performing company in the S&P 500 index this year.
In the past year, Meta's share price dropped by 73%, and its performance was worse than that of Align Technology, Generac Holdings, SVB Financial Group and Match Group, all of which are the bottom companies of the S&P 500 stock index.
Facebook's parent company has been busy coping with a series of challenges that have scared investors and ultimately led to a sharp decline in its share price.
For example, in October this year, Meta released a financial report showing that the company's sales had declined for the second consecutive quarter, and the company also released a weak performance forecast for the fourth quarter that was lower than analysts' expectations. The company attributed the decline in revenue to a series of problems, including the impact of the impending economic recession leading to the reduction of advertising spending, and the impact of Apple's 2021 iOS privacy update, which makes it more difficult for the company to track users on the Internet.
Investors also seem to be worried about Meta's huge investment in the construction of the metauniverse, that is, the digital world that people can enter through virtual reality and augmented reality helmets. Meta believes that the metauniverse will represent the next frontier of computing technology. If the company can take the lead in developing technologies that support this concept, it will consolidate its leadership in this field.
However, the establishment of the metauniverse is an extremely costly task. Meta's real laboratory business department is responsible for supervising its VR and AR plans. So far in 2022, the department has lost as much as 9.4 billion dollars. The company said that these losses "will increase significantly year by year".
Meta previously said: "After 2023, we are expected to accelerate the investment in real laboratories, so that we can achieve the company's goal, that is, to increase the company's operating income in the long-term future."
