Business
Facebook Parent Meta Sheds $200bn In Stock Plummeta
Facebook’s parent firm Meta on Thursday plunged over $200 billion in stock value — comparable to the size of New Zealand’s economy — after results that raised doubts about the troubled social media giant’s future.
In addition to costs of big investments on its metaverse vision for the internet and trouble for its core ads business, the firm predicted slower growth and even reported its first dip in daily users globally on the signature Facebook platform.
Facebook has long been marked by an insatiable push for growth, and now has nearly two billion daily users, but the results laid bare the challenges facing the social media giant on several fronts.
Shares have been down about 25 percent since shortly after the opening in New York, resulting in a more than $200 billion hit to the company’s market value.
“It was a disaster quarter for Facebook and clearly they have some major headwinds over the next year,” Wedbush’s Dan Ives said.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had some $25 billion in value wiped from his personal holding by the rout on Wall Street, according to filings on the company stock he owns.
Risk of not growing
Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has noted that it faces fierce competition for young users from the likes of explosively growing short-form video platform TikTok.
Ahead of results, analysts expected 1.95 billion daily active users on Facebook, but Meta reported 1.93 billion — a key indicator for where the platform is headed.
On the financial side, Meta reported a turnover of $33.67 billion, in line with its forecasts, but it made $10.3 billion in net profit in the fourth quarter, eight percent less than last year.
Investors also recoiled at Facebook’s report of losing roughly one million daily users globally between the last two quarters of 2021 — a fraction of the total but a potential signal of stagnation.
“It’s the first time the user base is shrinking,” said analyst Adam Sarhan from 50 Park Investment. “If the company is not growing, then it’s a complete reset for investors.”
It is essential to note Meta is a still massive and growing on the whole — as 2021 closed, 2.8 billion people used one of its four platforms and messenger services at least once a day, and 3.6 billion at least once a month.
One way out of Meta’s troubles would be to acquire the next big thing in social media, as it has done previously.
But the company is under considerable scrutiny from US regulators after the damning allegations that emerged from its whistleblower crisis last year.
The internal documents leaked by ex-worker Frances Haugen highlighted accusations that executives prioritized growth over keeping their billions of users safe.
However, Thursday’s dramatic sell-off is the latest to confront a Big Tech firm after a similar liquidation of Netflix shares last month, though the streaming giant has somewhat rebounded since.
Other tech giants such as Apple and Google parent Alphabet have rallied after results — though they both recently posted excellent numbers that calmed jittery markets.
Stocks have risen the last four days as the markets try to rebound from a bruising January pressured by worries over shifting US Federal Reserve policy and uncertainty over the crisis in Ukraine.
But the sharp fall in Meta and some other tech names “is raising doubts about the sustainability of the broader rebound effort,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare.
Cement price manipulation is under investigation by the FCCPC after a three-month study found Nigerian prices were high despite surplus capacity
Shoreline Group today announced that African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has approved a US$200 million facility in favour of Shoreline Power Company Limited and co-borrowers including Arkad S.p.A., Shoreline’s majority-owned engineering and construction platform.
Approved in June 2026, the facility was arranged and provided by Afreximbank as sole mandated lead arranger and lender. It provides bonding and working-capital capacity for Arkad’s delivery of the Hassi Bir Rekaiz project and supports Shoreline and its affiliates in developing further pipeline and infrastructure
projects in Nigeria and other permitted jurisdictions.
“This is a defining transaction for Shoreline and Arkad. We built Arkad as an African- sponsored engineering platform capable of competing at the highest level, and it is now delivering against a billion-dollar energy contract. Afreximbank’s US$200 million commitment gives the platform the financial strength to match its engineering capability and pursue further major infrastructure mandates. It demonstrates that African enterprises can assemble the capital, capability and partnerships required to compete for infrastructure at international scale.”
Hassi Bir Rekaiz Phase 2a Arkad holds 44 per cent of the approximately US$1 billion EPCCS-1 contract awarded by Groupement
Hassi Bir Rekaiz (GHBR) to an unincorporated consortium led by Egypt’s Petrojet, which holds 56 percent. EPCCS-1 covers engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning and start-up for the Phase 2a central processing facility and related infrastructure at the Hassi Bir Rekaiz field in Algeria’s Berkine
Basin.
GHBR is the joint operating entity for the licence, held by Sonatrach with 51 per cent and Thailand’s PTTEP with 49 per cent. The project includes a new crude oil processing facility with capacity of 31,500 barrels per day, facilities for associated gas and produced-water treatment, approximately 217 kilometres
of pipelines and the brownfield modifications required to integrate existing Phase 1 infrastructure.
The facilities are designed to support later expansion to 63,000 barrels per day under Phase 2b.
“This financing addresses the instruments that determine whether an EPC contractor can execute at scale: performance guarantees, advance payment guarantees and working capital through the project cycle. Hassi Bir Rekaiz is a demanding scope, combining a new central processing facility, associated treatment systems, pipelines and brownfield integration. With Petrojet, and with the support of Shoreline and Afreximbank, Arkad is focused on disciplined delivery against the project’s safety, quality and schedule requirements.”
The transaction was structured under Afreximbank’s Engineering, Procurement and Construction Initiative, which supports African engineering and construction firms with the financial instruments required to compete for and execute large infrastructure contracts. Afreximbank also supported the Arkad-Petrojet partnership through its EPC twinning work at the Intra-African Trade Fair held in Algiers
in 2025.
According to Afreximbank, the transaction is its first support for a Sub-Saharan African contractor undertaking a major infrastructure project in North Africa. For Shoreline, it demonstrates a practical model for combining African ownership and capital with established international engineering andindustrial capability.
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