What happened
Meta Platforms (META -4.19%) had a Thursday to forget, as its share price fell by nearly 5% against the 2.5% decline of the S&P 500 index. There were several small-ish news items about the social media giant that weren't particularly positive, hence the sell-off.
So what
The first of these was a comment by Elon Musk, Twitter's owner and an opinionated social media regular with a vast audience. On Wednesday, Musk tweeted a response to a tweet about layoffs at media companies, writing that "Advertising revenue next year will be low industrywide." Since he's the face of Twitter these days, many took this to apply to the social media sector as well, and Meta remains at the top of that heap.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean, Meta is halting the construction of two data centers in Denmark. Reuters, quoting company spokesman Peter Münster, reported that Meta will instead build a single data center of a new type more suitable for artificial intelligence (AI) functionalities.
The move is also part of Meta's efforts to become a leaner organization. "A significant part of these measures is to shift a larger part of our resources to high-priority growth areas, including a strategic investment in artificial intelligence," Münster said.
Now what
While neither of these developments is a batten-down-the-hatches emergency for Meta shareholders, they add to the general pessimism currently swirling around the stock. Hopefully for its investors, some more-positive news will hit the headlines before we reach the end of 2022.
