Meta Soars by Most in Decade, Adding $100 Billion in Value

Meta's stock surged on Thursday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings, said it would buy back billions of dollars in its stock, and overcame a court challenge to its ambitions in the so-called metaverse. The New York Times reports: Shares of the tech giant, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, climbed more than 23 percent, its biggest daily gain in nearly 10 years. And it was a huge move for a company its size, adding nearly $100 billion in market value in a single day, or about as much as Citigroup's entire market capitalization.

After ending last year with a loss of more than 60 percent, Meta's stock is up more than 50 percent this year, as the mood among tech investors has brightened. The Nasdaq Composite, an index that includes many tech companies, including Meta, has risen nearly 20 percent this year. The report notes that plenty of challenges remain for the company. "Meta faces setbacks in digital advertising as clients rein in spending because of higher interest rates and inflation," reports The New York Times. "The company is also fighting to retain users drawn to newer apps like TikTok, the short-form video app that Mr. Zuckerberg considers one of his most formidable rivals. The billions that Meta is spending pursuing its founder's vision of the metaverse may not pay off."

In November, Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees in what was the most significant job cuts since its founding in 2004.

$100B of hot air....

[gweihir]

That can vanish again just as fast.

Up $100 billion from a $700 billion loss

[UnknownSoldier]

Meta was once worth more than $1 trillion [cbsnews.com] in Sept. 2021. A year later, Oct. 2022m they lost $700 billion in value. Reality Lab alone cost them $4 billion operating losses in Q4 for a total loss of $13.7 billion.

Their metaverse is an utter joke. VRChat is eating their lunch. Meta couldn't even keep programmer John Carmack, literally a graphics guru, who co-invented the First Person Shooter genre [nytimes.com], to stay due to incompetent management.

Adding a $100 billion value then they are bleeding money isn't going to fix the problem.

Meta is still billions overinflated IMHO.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Meta was once worth more than $1 trillion [cbsnews.com] in Sept. 2021.

Honestly any time anyone mentions any statistic with 2020 or 2021 in it, they need to do so with a big arse asterisk next to it. Nothing which happened to tech stocks during that time made any sense and the entire experience should be wiped from our collective memory when talking about company performance in any way.

Their metaverse is an utter joke. VRChat is eating their lunch. Meta couldn't even keep programmer John Carmack, literally a graphics guru, who co-invented the First Person Shooter genre [nytimes.com], to stay due to incompetent management.

Their metaverse is a joke, but John Carmack didn't go because Meta couldn't keep him to stay. If they wanted to keep him they would have. The reality is he was always pushing for a different dir

No it didn't.

[The Evil Atheist]

There is no value being added. It is just how a reflection of how desperate investors are. Nothing else.

Re:

[Opportunist]

Pretty much this. Nothing to invest in, a weak economy and uncertainty, so investors park their money in something that at least hopefully shouldn't crash and burn within the year simply by virtue of inertia.

Rewarded for firing people?

[backslashdot]

These companies get rewarded for firing people. That isn't right. Firing people en masse is actually sign of incompetent executive management. Failure to hire resources they knew what to do with. Failure to come up with ways to utilize smart people. Who's fault is that?

Re:

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

What is the right amount of employees to fire when your business is bloated after a hiring spree in better economic times?

Re:

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

Also, is every single employee useful / productive / proving to be a good hire after the fact?

Re:

[backslashdot]

If you hired a bunch of incompetent people en masse and don't know what to do with them, that's your fault, others shouldn't bear that responsibility. A systemic fault of your process and executive leadership. You realize that a lot of lives are upended and negatively altered due to it? You should step aside and enable a successor. It's possible for anyone to error and hire someone incompetent, then you outplace them individually not as a group action which likely gets rid of whole departments.

Sometines (often) market moves are not reflective

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

... of fundamental or intrinsic value. Remember the short squeezes in GME, AMC, etc. In this particular case, META was the company everybody loved to hate as of late, and their earnings were slightly better than anticipated. So the bounce back and squeezy price action made sense. Remember that a short in pain is a forced buyer, just liek a long in pain is a forced seller. Regardless of the prospects of the company.

Sell High

[sudonim2]

Don't buy Meta stock looking to chase the market. Now is the time to unload their stock. If you have any, sell it all as fast as you can. Capitalism works on a boom-bust cycle. This is the boom. The coming bust is inevitable and predictable. Don't get caught behind it. Don't try to sell at the peak. That's the worst time to sell as that's when the pool of prospective buyers starts to shrink. Sell now while the pool of buyers is increasing.