Since becoming Meta, Facebook’s parent company has lost US$650 billion

It has been exactly one year to the day since Facebook's parent company rebranded as Meta, and in that time the company has entered financial free-fall.

It has been exactly one year to the day since Facebook’s parent company rebranded as Meta, and in that time the company has entered financial free-fall, analysts say.

Comparing the market values of Meta when it was first announced on Oct 28, 2021 to today, the company has shrunk by an astonishing US$650 billion.

Shares in Meta crashed 24 per cent on Thursday, to $97.94, sinking its stock to the lowest it’s been in nearly four years. The event cost Meta about US$67 billion, adding to the more than half a trillion dollars in value lost in 2022 alone. Meta’s market cap now stands at $263 billion. They are valued lowered than Home Depot and have been forced out of the ranks of the top 20 companies.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, saw his own personal fortune drop US$11 billion after the stock plummet, according to Forbes, who downgraded him from 25th richest person in the world to 29th richest at the market close on Thursday.

The incident echoes a previous crash in February which saw about $200 billion in Meta’s market value erased — the biggest loss in market value ever recorded for a U.S. company.

Since changing its name to Meta and investing heavily to create the “metaverse,” a virtual reality world, Facebook’s parent company has been plagued with woes. From the start of 2022 to now, the company has shed 70 per cent of its value.

At this time last year, on the day that Facebook rebranded as Meta, the company’s market cap was just over $900 billion. Just weeks before it had reached its peak value of over $1 trillion, joining an exclusive club consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon. The company was riding high.

Now, one year on, Meta is hopping from crisis to crisis.