Yahoo Finance’s Allie Garfinkle discusses Meta’s vulnerability to an economic downturn and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s latest comments on running the tech company.
SEANA SMITH
Well, taking a closer look at tech, a dire warning from Mark Zuckerberg. Meta CEO telling employees that he’s anticipating, quote, “one of the worst downturns we’ve seen in recent history.” The company also slashing its hiring goals for engineers by at least 30%. Allie Garfinkle is on the story for us here. And Allie, when we take a look at Meta and some of the dire warnings that we just heard from Mark Zuckerberg, reason to believe that Meta might be at more risk than some of the larger players out there in tech?
ALLIE GARFINKLE
Yeah, I think so, Seana. I mean, the markets are in turmoil we just heard NASDAQ having a historically bad start to the year. And while Meta isn’t getting hit as hard as some other names in tech, the numbers still aren’t great. Year to date, Meta is down more than 52% as of open today.
So it’s also important to remember at the same time, there’s a massive shift in the C-suite. Sheryl Sandberg is leaving in fall. And it’s also important to remember that the company actually came into this pandemic and came into this current crash with scandal surrounding it. So I think it is a really vulnerable time for them, absolutely.
DAVE BRIGGS:
I tell you what, if you’re an employee there and you hear these words from the boss, we are turning up the heat on performance goals, and there’s a bunch of people that shouldn’t be here, you’re not feeling comfortable about your future. Freshen your resume, friends. How would you describe the Meta strategy at this point?
ALLIE GARFINKLE:
It’s a tough thing for me to fully pin down. And I agree, I wouldn’t be feeling terribly safe either, because on one hand, right, the strategy is in the name, right? Meta, their strategy is to stake their claim on the Metaverse. And Zuckerberg has said earlier this month that they’re making a lot of progress on VR and AR headsets. However, on the other hand, just yesterday, they started testing NFTs on Facebook with select creators in the United States. And conversely, Twitter’s had NFT capabilities, actually, since January.
So on one hand, is it all– is it going that well? It’s not really clear. At the same time, we actually just got wind today that Meta shutting down its crypto wallet offering, that it– back in September. So, you know, Zuckerberg is clearly preparing for a massive downturn externally. But it’s hard to imagine there’s not fears about one internally as well.
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