Meta Platforms became the first publicly traded company to lose $200 billion in market value in one day.
Meta suffered the record one-day decline on February 3, 2022, when its share price fell sharply after the company reported weaker-than-expected user growth and gave a disappointing outlook. The drop erased more than $200 billion from Meta’s market capitalization in a single trading session.
The company was then called Facebook, but its corporate name had changed to Meta Platforms in October 2021. Its main social-networking services included Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, while the company was also investing heavily in virtual and augmented reality through Reality Labs.
The loss was measured in market capitalization, not in cash paid out or revenue lost. A fall in share price changes the paper value of all outstanding shares, which can produce an enormous valuation loss without an equivalent immediate cash withdrawal.