Meta shares plunged 14% this week, falling close to their pandemic low

Facebook hasn’t been this cheap since the beginning of the pandemic.

After plunging 14% for the week to close at $146.29, shares of Facebook parent Meta are at their lowest point since March 2020, and for a period on Friday, they had sunk even lower. Meta has lost 61% of its value over the past 12 months, by far the biggest slide among Big Tech stocks and more than double the drop in the Nasdaq Composite.

In sliding for five straight days, Meta is now trading just 28 cents above its closing price on March 16, 2020, when the early days of Covid-19 sent U.S. stocks reeling.

If Meta falls below $146.01, it will be the lowest since January 2019. That’s when Facebook was dealing with the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal that tested consumer confidence in the social media company and led to a series of heated congressional hearings.

Still, Facebook managed to expand its active users in the U.S. that quarter, though by just under 1 percent.

Since officially changing its name to Meta last October, the news for CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company has been almost all bad. Apple’s iOS privacy update made it more difficult for the company to target ads and the increased popularity of social media rival TikTok has drawn users and advertisers away from the app. Meanwhile, an economic slowdown has caused many companies to pull back on their online marketing spend.

In July, Meta said it was expecting a second straight period of declining sales as it reported second-quarter earnings that missed on the top and bottom lines.

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