(NewsNation Now) — Meta, the platform formerly known as Facebook, has lost a quarter of its value.
Shares fell more than 26% to $237.76 in afternoon trading last week, lopping more than $230 billion off the company’s overall value, or market capitalization. That’s the largest single-day decline for a company on record.
Now after 20 years, the company’s next chapter is in question. Facebook has had a huge competitive advantage for the last decade for two reasons: It reached almost 2 billion users a day and it could track users on Apple devices for the purpose of showing them ads. Today, the platform’s user base is declining for the first time in history. With each departing user, the network becomes less valuable.
Apple has also changed its privacy policy to prevent iPhone from users from being tracked for targeted advertising. This change alone is expected to cost Facebook $10 billion this year.
Some analysts have even downgraded the stock, meaning it’s currently viewed as less desirable than it was pre-earnings. Many investors are shedding some of their pricier stocks and rethinking investments as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates.