Meta collapses after Mark Zuckerberg says he will not give up on the metaverse; stock falls from $300 to $97

Is Facebook’s Meta going the way of MySpace? Earlier today, we wrote about Meta after the company reported a loss of $3.6 billion from its Reality Labs metaverse unit in the third quarter of 2022, causing its stock to close at about $130.

Now, Meta’s stock continues in a free fall immediately after the market opened after Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he will not give up on the metaverse. As of the time of writing Meta has fallen further to $199.58.

During the earnings calls yesterday, during the earnings call yesterday, Zuckerberg reiterated his commitment to spending billions of dollars developing the metaverse as investors grow weary about the health of Meta’s online advertising business. In the past 12 months, Meta has repurchased $42 billion of stock at an average price of $300. It is now trading at $112.

“I just think that there’s a difference between something being experimental and not knowing how good it’s going to end up being,” Zuckerberg said in response. “But I think a lot of the things that we’re working on across the family of apps, we’re quite confident that they’re going to work and be good,” he added

However, Zuckerberg said he “can’t tell you right now how big they are going to scale to be,” each improvement is “kind of going in the right direction.” Zuckerberg said that “obviously, the metaverse is a longer-term set of efforts that we’re working on” and that he thinks “that that is going to end up working, too.”

Meta has lost more than 70% of its value since peaking last year as all its business units continue to get pummeled on multiple fronts. The social giant has lost 70% of its value YTD as its stock falls from $300 to just $100.

It all started back in October of last year after Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed the corporate name from Facebook to Meta to reflect its focus on the metaverse, a term the social giant described as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.”

Zuckerberg is now doubling down on losing even more money building the metaverse. Meta also said it plans to invest $10 billion in the metaverse to reflect the company’s new vision. At the time, Meta said it plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build a “metaverse.” Zuckerberg added that the metaverse is a major investment for the company and plays a vital role in the company going forward.

Meanwhile, CNBC analyst Jim Cramer cried and apologized for being wrong and misleading investors.

Jim Cramer begins to cry and apologizes on being wrong on $META pic.twitter.com/c8qoB8iv3m

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) October 27, 2022

Update (4:06 PM EST): Meta stock has plunged by another $2. It’s now trading at $97.94 as of 4:06 PM New York Time.