Meta Platforms, Inc.

A $104B listing that loses half its value

Nasdaq glitches on day one; mobile revenue is a slide in a deck, not a number. Within months the market decides Facebook missed the phone. Then mobile ads actually ship — and never stop.

1. May 2012

   IPO at $38, and a broken first dayMarket

   Trading glitches and instant scepticism about mobile monetisation. By August the stock has fallen below $19.

   Closed $29.60 that month
2. Aug 2012

   The mobile panic bottomsCrisis

   Shares halve from the IPO as the lockup expires. Inside the company, the mobile ads product is already working — the single most important quarter in Meta’s history.

   Closed $18.06 that month
3. Apr 2012

   Instagram for $1BDeal

   Thirteen employees, no revenue. It becomes the best acquisition in internet history on any multiple you choose.

   Private company — no public price yet
4. Feb 2014

   WhatsApp for $19BDeal

   A price everyone calls absurd for an app charging $1 a year. Meta buys the default messaging layer for the entire non-US world.

   Closed $68.46 that month

Instagram pays off; the feed becomes the format

The $1B app purchase is revealed as the steal of the decade while Facebook, Instagram, and eventually WhatsApp assemble the largest attention pool ever monetised.

Cambridge Analytica to the rename

A data scandal, a congressional testimony era, advertiser boycotts — and revenue that grows through all of it. The business and the reputation decouple entirely.

1. Mar 2018

   Cambridge AnalyticaCrisis

   The stock drops ~20% in weeks; #DeleteFacebook trends. Advertisers never actually leave — the first proof the channel is too efficient to boycott.

   Closed $159.79 that month
2. Oct 2021

   Facebook becomes MetaProduct

   The rename lands weeks before the all-time high — and the single worst year in modern mega-cap history.

   Closed $323.57 that month

The biggest drawdown a mega-cap has survived

A rename into a hype top, an ATT gut-punch to the ad engine, Reality Labs burning $10B a year — the stock falls 77%. Then the Year of Efficiency cuts arrive and margins do the rest.

1. Feb 2022

   The biggest one-day loss in market historyCrisis

   Apple’s tracking changes gut ad targeting and Reality Labs’ losses become visible. Meta loses $232B of value in one session.

   Closed $211.03 that month
2. Oct 2022

   $93 a share — 77% below the peakCrisis

   A year of losses on metaverse spending, rising rates, and iOS changes. The stock prices the company as if the feed itself is finished.

   Closed $93.16 that month
3. Nov 2022

   11,000 layoffs announcedCrisis

   The first mass layoff in company history marks the pivot. Operating margin is about to double.

   Closed $118.10 that month

The feed learns to recommend itself

AI recommendations replace social graphs as the growth engine, capex goes vertical for GPU clusters, and a dividend arrives — the company’s argument that the machine now funds everything.

1. Feb 2024

   First dividend, +$196B in a dayMarket

   The largest single-session gain any stock has ever posted. Buybacks, cost cuts, and AI-driven ad pricing do it at once.

   Closed $490.13 that month
2. Jul 2024

   Llama goes frontierProduct

   Open-weight models make Meta’s AI strategy legible: commoditise the layer it depends on, monetise the attention it owns.

   Closed $474.83 that month
3. Jun 2025

   Scale AI and the superintelligence labDeal

   A ~$14B stake and a hiring raid. The capex chart goes vertical — the market decides Meta is a real AI competitor, then asks what it costs to stay one.

   Closed $738.09 that month