Meta Shares Plunge 24% To the Lowest Price Since 2016 (cnbc.com) 119
Shares of Meta plunged 24% Thursday morning as investors and analysts digested the company's third-quarter earnings miss and a weak fourth-quarter outlook. Shares were trading under $100 at market open, the lowest price since 2016. From a report: The parent company of Facebook reported quarterly revenue of $27.7 billion Wednesday, a decline of more than 4% year over year and its second straight quarterly decline. Its profit plummeted 52% to $4.4 billion. Meta warned the fourth quarter would be more of the same, issuing a weaker-than-expected outlook. It's expecting revenue for the fourth quarter to be $30 billion to $32.5 billion. Analysts were expecting sales of $32.2 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated his commitment to spending billions of dollars developing the metaverse. Meta's Reality Labs unit, which is responsible for developing the virtual reality and related augmented reality technology that underpins its plans for the metaverse, has lost $9.4 billion so far this year. Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock Thursday, citing higher spending. Analyst Brian Nowak slashed his price target to $105 from $205. He expects the company's issues to persist as Meta continues to increase spending to build out its AI capabilities. Further reading: Facebook's worth less than Home Depot.
Facebook Freefall (Score:3)
If the price of Facebook, I will not call it Meta for any reason, continues to plumate make it will be a nice addition to Elons cap soon. Wouldn't it be glorious if he walked away with both face book and twatter.
Re:Facebook Freefall (Score:5, Funny)
Only if he bought Youtube as well. That way he could consolidate them all and call it "YouTwitFace".
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Your ideas are intriguing. I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
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If the price of Facebook, I will not call it Meta for any reason, continues to plumate
Wait -- Facebook is growing feathers? Maybe that will make it look more attractive to investors!
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Elon should better start worrying about the $1bn/year in payments he has to make the loaners backing his Twitter purchase.
You know. The company which doesn't turn a profit.
Keep going Meta! (Score:5, Insightful)
You can do this, plunge deep!
Re: Keep going Meta! (Score:3)
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Come to think of it, Facebook is - or rather, was - in the top 5 in the composition of the S&P500 [cnbc.com], so this is not making retirement any closer for me.
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C'mon, you don't quit when you are almost 3/4 of the way there. You push through to the end, mind over matter. Can't quit now.
"Second Life" done right (Score:2)
You can do this, plunge deep!
That's right, only Zuckerberg can bring us a "Second Life" done right. All we needed over the decades was the convenient VR headset and his brilliant marketing. :-)
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If only that were its worst failing. Take your pick:
- still low resolution, lending to "screen door" effect
- narrow field of view distractingly removing peripheral vision
- heavy AF glass lenses
- severely underpowered making all visualizations look like something from a Nintendo Wii from 12 years ago
- new "pro" hardware is more expensive than a decent gaming laptop with orders of magnitude more capability, or similarly priced to other head-mounted displays with far better resolution and field of view and fa
It's a correction (Score:5, Informative)
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Overvalued for years? Their stock isn't just suddenly dropping randomly due to being "overvalued". It says right in the summary quoted. Their net income went from 40 billion a year, to what looks to be 16-20 billion.
They're valued according to their income. There is actually a reason for their stock valuation. It's not like playing with bitcoins.
Re:It's a correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook, the social media website, still rakes in a lot of money. Meta, the VR science experiment, is no way going to make back that $10B/year.
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> Meta, the VR science experiment, is no way going to make back that $10B/year.
Well, the VR division had about $700 million in revenue over the past six months, and is growing by several hundred percent per year. I don't know if the exact vision Zuck has articulated is going to come to fruition, but there's definitely a big business somewhere within the realm of AR/VR, and Meta is way far out in the lead, with a ton of hardware, major software products, a network to market it to, and luminaries like John
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Carmack resigned a while back and is now a consultant for them. He says he is unhappy with the direction they are going.
"In a podcast interview in August, Mr. Carmack said the scale of Meta's metaverse bet -- last year, it reported a $10 billion loss in the division housing its A.R. and V.R. units -- made him "sick to my stomach thinking about that much money being spent." He added that Meta's development of the metaverse has been hampered by big-company bureaucracy and concerns about issues like diversity
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If the revenue is from selling it's various headgear, it will be low profit revenue.
Only Apple seems to have large margins on consumer hardware - everyone else has low margins.
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but there's definitely a big business somewhere within the realm of AR/VR,
Remember the plot-buy frenzy in Second Life years ago where companies were buying plots of virtual land for silly prices so that they could prepare their virtual Brand Land for when the masses would undoubtedly come?
Remember how that turned out?
Zuck: "Run before you walk" (Score:2)
Why the Hell doesn't Zuck do a "screen-based" VR like Second Life (SL), or even buy SL as a first step. Screen is easier for customers to jump into and buys time and market share to perfect 3D.
Why is Zuck so obsessed with the goggles thing? Dumb dumb dumb. Web-based co's often need to gamble, but take the safer gamble given a choice.
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Zuck: "Run before you walk"
... and break things.
Re: Zuck: "Run before you walk" (Score:2)
Because then he can't trick rubes into thinking his company is innovative.
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One thought is that the Winklevoss twins were the ones who had the good ideas about Facebook, and then Zuckerberg didn't have anything.
Re: It's a correction (Score:2)
That seems increasingly likely as we watch the dumpster fire that is Mark Zuckerberg's fiefdom.
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It's kind of amazing how useless Facebook is becoming. The content/ad ration is quickly approaching the levels of Myspace.
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Yes, it has indeed been overvalued for years. The price was determined to a great extent by the expectation that the company would continue to grow. Once facebook had attracted a significant percentage of Earth's population, there simply is no longer room to grow. This quarter's report was the first real indication to these shareholders of the reality that the gravy train would indeed end.
If facebook were not overvalued, then this stock price drop would be a huge overreaction, because revenues are down by o
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A correction is defined as a 20% drop. This is down some 75% from its peak - WAY more than a correction.
This shit going to about $25 would be a proper correction.
You wouldn't know it by their spending patterns (Score:5, Interesting)
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Heh, how does it feel to have investors clamoring for your head on a platter?
Investor's aren't. The Oculus hardware and the acquisition and development of VR was heavily supported. It's this Horizons Metaverse bullshit investors want to stop.
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It seems like if they reduced their $10B annual investment by 99% down to $100M/year on VR that would be plenty, right? It's mind-boggling.
$100M/year isn't as much as you think. That is perhaps around 500 employees, and maybe a quarter of them would be in some form of engineering teams. They aren't going to be a market leader in even VR tech with 50-100 engineers.
Going back to 2017, before the big push into VR, Facebook's AR/VR division had around 3000 employees. That would be closer to $1B per year. So I'd say Meta could still have dreams of being a market leader in this field if they reduced their spend by 80-90%. I work at a large enterpris
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VR goggles use many of the same parts as phones
VR is nothing about hobbling the parts of a phone together. There are significant developments which have come out of Facebook in the past year including things such as foveated rendering and eye tracking, body and inside out tracking.
The actual "parts" of a VR headset are borderline insignificant to what needs to be developed.
Re: You wouldn't know it by their spending pattern (Score:2)
Then why do VR enthusiasts keep complaining about the hardware?
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There's nothing wrong with investing $10bn in VR. That's still far less than other companies invest in R&D. The problem is investing in a concept that is shitting out the Metaverse turd instead of something that people want: Better hardware, possibly better games.
If the $10bn was actually producing something good investors would be all for it.
"Meta" stands for... (Score:3)
Meta is short for "Metastasize" - and this story proves it, yet again.
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Good. (Score:2)
Mismanaged companies an opportunity (Score:2)
The only problem is a CEO that had the idea that social+vr is now a thing, or can be made a thing through his force of will, and is so arrogant he cannot imagine hims
Re:Mismanaged companies an opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
There is an investor class that specializes in them.
Do you prefer to call them "vultures" or "locusts"?
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There is an investor class that specializes in them.
Do you prefer to call them "vultures" or "locusts"?
They are neither. Vultures are a different class of investors. The class I am referring to do not breakup companies, they see the value in replacing bad management with good. They specialize in fixing mismanaged but otherwise good companies. Its a profitable niche.
Re: Mismanaged companies an opportunity (Score:2)
FB would have to pretty much die for investors to be able to force out Zuck. The stock structure makes him a dictator, not a CEO.
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FB would have to pretty much die for investors to be able to force out Zuck. The stock structure makes him a dictator, not a CEO.
Is that still true? He has sold half his stock since Facebook went public. Down from 28% to about 14%.
Re: Mismanaged companies an opportunity (Score:2)
As far as I can tell, people were referencing him having 58% control with 12% ownership back in February. Maybe something has changed, but it's recent and I can't find reference to it.
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Tell me all about how great MySpace and Yahoo are doing these days!
The investor class of turnaround specialists look for companies with bad management and good products or services. They pass on companies with bad products or services.
Also, to be clear, I am referring to investors that will have to spend a little money to turn things around.
I am nor referring to a new CEO that is overpaid because he is lending his name to a failing company and has a golden parachute so he walks away far wealthier regardless of success or failure.
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Meta/Facebook will not die. Mismanaged companies with decent assets (a social network, vr headsets) are a great opportunity.
Meta could certainly die as a company, but you are correct that its assets would remain valuable to the companies that acquire them. MySpace sold off a number of its assets to various companies as it met its demise. And it's technically still around, even though it is a small shell of its previous self.
There could come a day where Meta is sold off for parts, and some other company makes use of what's left of the social network. You are correct that the value of Meta and all of its assets would never reach $
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Meta/Facebook will not die. Mismanaged companies with decent assets (a social network, vr headsets) are a great opportunity.
Meta could certainly die as a company, but you are correct that its assets would remain valuable to the companies that acquire them.
I am not referring to a breakup and sale of the assets. There is an investor class of turnaround specialists who look for broken companies, broken through bad management despite good products or services. I think Meta/Facebook fits this category, its problems primarily management based. Consider some of the classic symptoms of such companies: autocratic style, vague goals, inadequate strategic analysis. In short management by CEO brain fart.
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I am not referring to a breakup and sale of the assets. There is an investor class of turnaround specialists who look for broken companies, broken through bad management despite good products or services.
Okay, then I guess I would have nothing to disagree with if you had originally said "Meta/Facebook most likely won't die" instead of being as claiming there was no doubt. I absolutely agree the most likely scenario for Facebook, in the event of prolonged and significant downturns, would simply go under new management. Similar to Yahoo. But a complete failure of Facebook is certainly possible, especially since it relies so heavily on network effects which activist investors would have a hard time turning aro
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Also: That's...not what happened with Jobs.
In what regard? The Mac was a commercial failure during the entirety of Jobs 1.0's tenure. It was only after his departure, when engineers were free to make changes he opposed, did the Mac become successful. He matured and learned at NeXT and Pixar. The Jobs 2.0 that returned to Apple was a very different person.
So, Zuck is hellbent on destroying his company (Score:5, Insightful)
He's spending billions to pivot into a product no one seems to give two shits about... and effectively betting the future of Meta/Facebook on it.
It's like no one in Meta lived through the VR craze of the late '90s - '00s.
But this time there is a headset (Score:2)
He's spending billions to pivot into a product no one seems to give two shits about... and effectively betting the future of Meta/Facebook on it. It's like no one in Meta lived through the VR craze of the late '90s - '00s.
Google "Second Life" kids. Now add a VR headset, yeah, that's what was missing.
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Google "Second Life" kids. Now add a VR headset, yeah, that's what was missing.
It's pretty incredible. Apparently they sold a lot of Occulus Quest headsets during the first year of the pandemic, and most users find them to be little more than a novelty which wears off after a couple seasons of Beat Saber.
I legit have no idea how they want to make long term profits out of VR.
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Google "Second Life" kids. Now add a VR headset, yeah, that's what was missing.
It's pretty incredible. Apparently they sold a lot of Occulus Quest headsets during the first year of the pandemic, and most users find them to be little more than a novelty which wears off after a couple seasons of Beat Saber.
I legit have no idea how they want to make long term profits out of VR.
I liked the shooter with the robots, played it briefly at a friend's house. It was good immersion into the game world, I had some good flinches when surprised by a robot I did not see coming. There is gaming potential here. Both in the entertainment sense and the serious gaming sense. It's all about being able to make headsets comfortable. I only played for about 15 minutes but I felt fine.
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yea you liked it so much you never even learned its name, show any desire to play it again, or buy a system... that's kind of the problem with these things.
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yea you liked it so much you never even learned its name, show any desire to play it again, or buy a system... that's kind of the problem with these things.
If I had an oculus I would have purchased the game. The fact remains oculus demonstrates potential for games, that it provides greater immersion.
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A rock demonstrates potential for games and the immersion thing is a matter of opinion not fact. Personally I have dabbled with almost all available VR system's since the late 90's ... they are neat for a while then you can't be assed to drag them out of the closet.
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A rock demonstrates potential for games and the immersion thing is a matter of opinion not fact. Personally I have dabbled with almost all available VR system's since the late 90's ... they are neat for a while then you can't be assed to drag them out of the closet.
That sounds like game design, not hardware.
Re: But this time there is a headset (Score:2)
Most people understand the Matrix to be a warning. But there are a lot of powerful but socially inept people in tech who think it's a goal, especially since the pandemic.
The idea here is to capture the world's population on a single platform. Once you have the world on your platform, monetization is easy.
Look how much money they make selling Likes? Add to that digital property (NFTs and such), and it's clear their monetization scheme is based on being able to manipulate the behavior of the world.
It's a stup
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Pretty much, yes.
I know Second Life only as the proverbial playground for Furries and cosplayers. Now take a wild guess who is the largest group of VR users. Yes. Furries and cosplayers. But they already have a place to go. VR Chat.
Nobody gives a fuck about the Metastasis.
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It's like they all didn't live yet for the whole dot.com boom and bust. Because that really, really smacks a lot like it. An overhyped "if you build it they will come" cult, driven by nothing but the faith of its investors who put all their eggs into this one basket with zero backup plan in case it doesn't work out.
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Good proof that most tech CEOs are not really that smart, or business-savvy. They're just luckier than average.
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Good proof that most tech CEOs are not really that smart, or business-savvy. They're just luckier than average.
Well, they are also smarter and more business-savvy than average, just not in the top 0.01% as their net worth would suggest.
I'd say most if not all of them are just a few lucky breaks away from making $400k per year as a FAANG engineer or business executive, but they would be successful either way. I make closer to $250k yearly, but I'd also say I'm only a few lucky breaks away from making half that as a senior software engineer at a mid-sized Midwest company. I feel it's important to understand that regar
Re: So, Zuck is hellbent on destroying his company (Score:2)
Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.
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This is what happens when the CEO has no vision and no clue but managed to eliminate anybody with a clue and is now surrounded by "yes-men": Billions pissed-away on nonsense.
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There's nothing wrong with VR and that is a concept and product on which is on the rise. What Meta is wasting billions on is this stupid Metaverse shit, which no one (even heavy VR proponents including Oculus founders) want.
Re: So, Zuck is hellbent on destroying his company (Score:2)
https://business.yougov.com/co... [yougov.com]
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"Forget it"? I'm just sitting here, enjoying the shitshow.
See also Musk spending $44bn on Twitter of all companies.
Re: So, Zuck is hellbent on destroying his company (Score:2)
Well, retirement portfolio managers didn't seem to get the memo or else they would have realized they were breaching their fiduciary responsibilities by investing in a company with no public oversight.
At this point people are watching because lots of them are losing money through little fault of their own. If your S&P 500 index fund investment dropped because Zuck wants to play with VR, you might start to have an opinion about how FB is run.
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He's not even doing it as the book he's copying.
It's basically a shit second life clone instead of an set of open standards and structures to allow any company or individual to create part of the metaverse.
If he truly wants to create the thing from the book, the first step would be to write a bunch of RFC documents, not just pretend you're doing the thing.
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It's like no one in Meta lived through the VR craze of the late '90s - '00s.
Those old enough to have had the money to buy VR gear in the 90's don't do social media and don't work at Facebook because they grew up knowing better.
Oh and yeah, it's FACEBOOK, not Meta. Meta is the fake name Facebook hides behind to make you think they're not just a tired old toxic social media platform and pretend they do cool things people want.
So the Metastasis really IS like Dot.com 2.0 (Score:2)
Complete with the market crash and burn at the end.
But that was supposed to happen during the Superbowl halftime break, I mean, it's not even Black Friday yet.
I'm for VR, just not from FaceBook (Score:2)
I just don't trust Meta to do it right. With how oddly heavy-handed they are with moderation, I barely trust FB itself (mainly on because that's where the people I know are). I would like the other products that come from Meta, but I have zero desire to become any more ingrained in the Meta ecosystem.
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For a Metaverse to become popular, it has to be build on an open source, cross-platform framework. That is not what Meta is doing.
I'd argue the largest new consumer market segments to take off in the past couple decades are social media, mobile computing, and gig worker apps. All of them were driven by private companies without an open cross-platform framework. Android is the closest thing which resembles an open platform, but Google still controls it.
So I strongly disagree that the Metaverse needs to be built on an open source cross-platform framework to become popular. Google or Apple (and sadly even Meta) could absolutely create so
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The original Neal Gaiman concept was that everybody could see everybody; my contention was that couldn't happen with vendor lock-in
Ok, then it's just a difference in definition of what the Metaverse is (or would be). I don't think it is likely we would see Neal Gaiman's original concept ever happening. It was a fiction novel after all. Certainly possible, but companies have learned that they make most of their money by finding ways to make it hard for others to compete, and taking advantage of network effects is the #1 trend.
I'm not predicting that we will only see walled gardens in the AR/VR industry, I'm only refuting that it would b
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I'm not sure the public will accept any new product from Facebook, considering the public viewpoint of the company is so poor. Many still use Facebook because of network effects, but very few really like the company. One poll [cnn.com] showed 76% of people feeling Facebook makes US society worse, compared to 11% who feel it makes society better.
Very few people want anything new and useful to come from Facebook. They look to companies like Google and Apple, or new startups, for the next exciting thing. I am certainly
Still overvalued (Score:2)
Lets make it "the" central thing to remember that "meta" is not "concrete" and make it a spectacular fail.
Doh! (Score:3)
A company becomes hostile toward a large part of its user base (censoring them, kicking them off, dumping half a billion dollars into elections to oppose them, etc) and then lets the CEO dump piles of cash into a recycled VR idea (has Zuck heard of VRML and all the sites created for that, and other goggles than Occulus, which all point to this tech not being unique and not taking off with average users?) --- what could possibly go wrong?
When lightning strikes, and you become a billionaire with something not original (Facebook is just a better MySpace) It's easier to stay rich by just making your accidentally successful venture gradually better and keeping as many users happy as possible, than to destroy your brand and then try to come up with something new (which you have no actual experience doing)
dumb investors (Score:2)
Anyone who was still holding FB stock wasn't paying attention.
This shit show will continue. But there will be more idiots who think this is a buying opportunity.
Expected outcome (Score:2)
Fo
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The folks you are referring to have been led to believe that the ends justify the means. It is not ignorance when you knowingly go along with something you know is not right in order to obtain something you want.
https://birdsarentreal.com/ [birdsarentreal.com]
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requisite Idiocracy moment: "Ow, my balls!" [youtube.com]
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Congratulations, you're replying to copy pasta. ACs have been posting that exact text for over a year.
Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:2)
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Congratulations, you're replying to copy pasta. ACs have been posting that exact text reply to that exact text reply to the original copy pasta for almost a year.
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Congratulations, you're replying to copy pasta. ACs have been posting that exact text reply to that exact text reply to the original copy pasta for almost a year...
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Someone screwed up their do while loop.
Ctrl-C
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you're obviously a real Ultra MAGA moron!
As a moron myself, I resent being compared to a MAGA
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> The major causes of inflation are the Coivd shutdown
Nations should balance their budgets so they have emergency funds for pandemics, war, etc. This is what Keynes originally imagined, not deficits as the norm.
Republicans blow budgets on taxcuts for rich and Democrats blow it on social spending. Granted, I think the second is the better option if forced into a choice, but ideally both parties would find a way to balance.
The problem is there's insufficient incentive for politicians to balance. Voters ten
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This is not a story about FB, this is the story of how people cannot just live within their means and demand governments to give them more without paying for it.
My grandparents were able to have a custom built house , on freshly-cleared land in a suburb, and raise three children, with nothing but my grandfather's income. My grandfather was a blue collar worker; I *think* he graduated high school. Sure, they had a single TV (with rabbit ears) and a single car (station wagon, used), and my grandmother wasn't exactly sporting whatever was the 1960s equivalent of a Dior bag, but reliably, nobody went hungry. The mortgage was paid, and the house was warm in the winter a