Needham Senior Analyst Laura Martin discusses Meta’s one-day crash rankings as the worst in stock market history and its weight on the company’s future.
Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms is planning to lay off thousands of employees this week, the first widespread layoffs in the social media platform’s history, according to a Wall Street Journal report Sunday.
In recent months, Twitter, Snap, Microsoft and other companies have cut their workforces with wide cuts across the tech industry.
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment Sunday, but directed Fox Business to comment that CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg made during the third-quarter earnings call last month.
“In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas,” Zuckerberg told investors on October 26. This means that some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will remain flat or shrink next year.”
Mark Zuckerberg, via video, speaks at the 2022 SXSW Convention and Celebrations at the Austin Convention Center on March 15, 2022 in Austin, Texas. (Samantha Burkard / Getty Images for SXSW / Getty Images)
Zuckerberg said META expects “2023 to end up being either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than it is today.”
The meta stock has lost nearly 73 per cent so far this year.
| anchor | Security | The last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| meta | Meta Platforms Inc. | 90.79 | +1.88 | +2.11% |
META warns 1M Facebook users about ANDROID, iOS apps used to steal login information
Meta investor, Altimeter Capital, sent an open letter to Zuckerberg and the tech giant’s board of directors last month, calling for them to cut 20% of the company’s workforce.
Altimeter CEO Brad Gerstner wrote in the letter, “Like many other companies in a zero-rate world – meta has drifted into a land of excess – too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency.” “This lack of focus and fitness is obscured when development is easy but fatal when growth slows and techniques change.”
Facebook’s Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters on October 28, 2021 in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Tony Eweller, FILE/AP Images)
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Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta last year as the company shifted its focus to the Metaverse, a move that has struggled to gain traction.
Meta employed 87,300 at the end of September, representing a 28% jump from a year earlier.
