'Take the money and run': top calls on META in 2022
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For Facebook parent Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), 2022 will likely go down in history as a year worth forgetting.
At the start of the year, Meta's (META) market capitalization was just shy of $800B, as the company's stock price ended 2021 at $336.35 a share. But, as 2022 came to a close, Meta's (META) shares ended the year at $120.34 each, and the company's market cap was a hair shy of $320B. That's a decline of more than 60% for those keeping score at home.
Of course, hindsight is always 20-20. But Seeking Alpha editors made some of the best predictions about Meta (META) for the year.
Make like Steve Miller
Seeking Alpha contributor and retail investor Eric Sprung nailed the troubles Meta (META) and its investors were going to face in 2022.
In fact, Sprung didn't wait for the calendar to turn over to 2022 to tell investors what he thought of what they should do with Meta's (META) stock. On Dec. 21, 2021, Sprung borrowed a line from the Steve Miller Band and told Seeking Alpha readers, "It's time to take the money and run."
Sprung wasn't the only Seeking Alpha contributor to call it.
The Apple vulnerability
Earlier in the year, Apple (AAPL) made a series of privacy changes to its iOS operating system for mobile devices. In a nutshell, those changes gave iPhone and iPad users more control over being tracked across sites they visit on their devices. That move had a negative effect on Meta (META) and other social-media companies that depend on advertising for a major piece of their revenue.
And in May, contributor Gavin Barwell didn't hold back in calling Meta (META) "a loser" in the new ad-tech universe.
"Meta's weakness has always been its relationship with Apple," Barwell said. "Apple's iOS privacy changes are the iceberg that is sinking the Titanic."
Some evidence of that could be found in Meta's (META) third-quarter results, which were the company's last results to come out in 2022. Meta (META) reported third-quarter total advertising revenue of $27.2B. That amount was down by almost 4% from the same period in 2021, and off by 3.3% from its second-quarter results.
The tech job cuts continue
Another sign of Meta's (META) bad year was the company saying in November that it will cut 11,000 jobs, due in part to a decline in advertising revenue. Back in May, Seeking Alpha contributor and Coachmen's Research analyst Alex Ponte said that with Meta's (META) employee growth rate historically exceeding its revenue growth, such a move has had a negative effect on the company's profit margins.
Ponte said that in his opinion, Meta's (META) total employee and total growth "could become a precursor for underperforming annual [earnings per share] growth."
And in the third quarter of 2022, Meta (META) reported a profit of $1.64 a share - almost 50% less than the $3.22 a share earned in the third quarter of 2021.
An embarrassing event from Meta's (META) also garnered attention recently, as the company agreed to pay $725M to settle a class-action suit related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.