#BYMEspresso☕: Zuckerberg got something "wrong"

Meta, whose stock has plunged 71% this year, is taking steps to pare costs following several quarters of disappointing earnings and a slide in revenue.

Meta, whose stock has plunged 71% this year, is taking steps to pare costs following several quarters of disappointing earnings and a slide in revenue. 

The retrenchment, the company’s most drastic since the founding of Facebook in 2004, reflects a sharp slowdown in the digital advertising market, an economy wobbling on the brink of recession and Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar investment in a speculative virtual-reality push called the metaverse.

Shares rose about 3.5% in premarket trading on Wednesday before markets opened in New York.

Zuckerberg said in the statement that he’d anticipated that the surge in e-commerce and web traffic from the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns would be part of a permanent acceleration. “But the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than expected. I got this wrong.” 

Meta is joining a spate of technology companies that have announced job cuts in recent weeks or said they planned to pause hiring.