Dusseldorf Without question, Meta is to be envied. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp recently earned almost 28 billion dollars and made a profit of 8.5 billion dollars – and that in one quarter. Some Dax companies do not get such numbers in the entire financial year.
But in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, such strong numbers don’t count for much when the outlook is bleak and there is no strong growth imagination. In addition, there is now an indictment by the US Attorney’s Office for insufficient data protection.
Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is in dire straits. With great foresight he bought Instagram in 2012, two years later he acquired WhatsApp, the purchase price of 19 billion dollars shocked the world at the time. Today it seems like a preferential price.
This bought Facebook valuable time. But the acquisitions can’t hide the fact that Meta is what they call “train wreck in slow motion” in America. Even if the train derails in slow motion: the crash cannot be prevented, even if you foresee it for a long time.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Almost 2.9 billion people are active on Facebook, almost half of humanity. China, Russia and other countries fall away. The famous network effect is reaching its limits. Instagram is still popular with young people, but the next generation is relying on Tiktok.
Investors don’t believe in Metaverse
Meta groans under the law of big numbers: the more it earns, the harder it is to show high percentage growth. That partially explains the stock’s crash, Meta has lost a whopping $350 billion in market value over the past eight months.
Investors don’t believe in the metaverse touted by Zuckerberg, the merging of the digital and real worlds. It will come. But the prerequisites such as computing power will not be in place for many years. A decade will easily pass before a new Facebook or Instagram develops with the Metaverse. An eternity on Wall Street.
More: Inside Meta – The Deep Fall of the Facebook Group