The sun is well and truly setting on Mark Zuckerberg’s empire. At least if the Meta stock price is any indication.
A bad year has graduated to verifiably worse after the Facebook and Instagram parent company’s latest earnings report revealed it had once again missed the mark in terms of dollars and cents.
Not only had profits halved during Q3 – representing the second consecutive quarter informed by disappointing numbers – with revenue down 4.5% overall, but it seems as though Zucc has zero intentions of abandoning his metaverse venture. Despite mass criticism from both outsiders and his own camp.
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“The cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse ambition is clearer than ever,” GlobalData analyst Rachel Foster Jones told The Guardian.
“Meta has put its entire business on the line for the metaverse, which still doesn’t exist, and the gamble is not paying off.”
“Meta has been too busy attempting to push the metaverse that it has run its core ad business into the ground, and a string of poor results has taken its toll on investor confidence.”
To date, Zucc’s pet project has cost the company over US$100 billion on research and development, as well as product development (US$15 billion in the past year alone).
Rachel Foster Jones added: “Zuckerberg has let the narrative of the metaverse take over the company, and investors are concerned about plunging more money into this endeavour.”
“The metaverse will probably not be profitable for another decade, and threats of hiring freezes are not enough to convince investors that Meta is focusing on what will pay the bills now.”
“Over time, these are going to end up being very important investments for the future of our business,” Mark Zuckerberg has stated.
“This is some of the most historic work we’re doing. People are going to look back on [this] decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here.”
Zuckerberg added: “While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth.”
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How has this impacted the man and MMA hobbyist directly?
You may recall just a few months prior, we pointed out Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune was considerably lighter than when it entered 2022.
In the wake of the Meta stock price dipping by 25% – bringing the total down to under US$98 from a 52-week high of US$353.83 – with two whole months still left on the calendar, Mark Zuckerberg has effectively lost approximately US$100 billion in this year alone.
At the time of this writing, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth sits at just US$38.1 billion.
