Facebook parent company Meta is now the worst performer in the S&P 500 this year - CNBC

With Meta shares sinking to caller lows, the societal media elephantine is present the worst performer successful the S&P 500 this twelvemonth arsenic of Thursday.

Meta shares are down astir 73% implicit the past twelvemonth and are performing much poorly than Align Technology, Generac Holdings, SVB Financial Group and Match Group — each companies that comprise the bottommost tier of the banal marketplace index.

The Facebook-parent has been dealing with a bevy of challenges that person spooked investors and sent its shares tumbling.

In October, for instance, Meta reported its 2nd consecutive quarterly income driblet and issued anemic fourth-quarter guidance that was beneath analyst's expectations. Meta attributed the gross diminution to a big of problems, including a looming recession that has caused businesses to propulsion backmost connected advertizing walk and the lingering effects of Apple's 2021 iOS privateness update that's made it much hard for the institution to way users crossed the Internet.

Investors besides look to beryllium acrophobic astir Meta's costly foray building the metaverse, the integer satellite that radical tin entree utilizing virtual world and augmented world headsets. Meta is betting that the metaverse volition correspond the adjacent frontier for computing, and if the institution gets a caput commencement processing the technologies underpinning the concept, it volition cement its presumption arsenic a person successful the space.

But gathering the metaverse doesn't travel inexpensive with Meta's Reality Labs concern unit, which is overseeing its VR and AR initiatives, losing $9.4 cardinal frankincense acold successful 2022. The institution said those losses "will turn importantly year-over-year."

"Beyond 2023, we expect to gait Reality Labs investments specified that we tin execute our extremity of increasing wide institution operating income successful the agelong run," Meta said successful October.