Meta Platforms lost more than US$200 billion in market value in a single day after its February 2022 earnings report.
On February 3, 2022, Meta Platforms’ share price plunged after the company reported disappointing user-growth figures and issued weaker-than-expected guidance. The decline erased roughly US$232 billion in market capitalization, widely reported as the largest single-day loss in market value for a U.S. company at that time.
The company was then still commonly associated with its former corporate name, Facebook, although it had changed its name to Meta Platforms in October 2021. The rebranding emphasized the metaverse, while Facebook remained the name of one of the company’s social-networking products.
The market reaction also reflected competition from TikTok, privacy changes affecting digital advertising, and the company’s heavy investment in virtual and augmented reality. A market-capitalization loss does not mean that the company paid out that amount in cash; it represents the change in the market value investors assigned to its outstanding shares.