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Meta declined to comment on the WSJ report.
Facebook parent Meta in October forecasted a weak holiday
quarter and significantly more costs next year wiping about $67
billion off Meta's stock market value, adding to the more than
half a trillion dollars in value already lost this year.
The disappointing outlook comes as Meta is contending with
slowing global economic growth, competition from TikTok, privacy
changes from Apple, concerns about massive spending on the
metaverse and the ever-present threat of regulation.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects the
metaverse investments to take about a decade to bear fruit. In
the meantime, he has had to freeze hiring, shutter projects and
reorganize teams to trim costs.
"In 2023, we're going to focus our investments on a small number
of high priority growth areas. So that means some teams will
grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink
over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as
either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller
organization than we are today" Zuckerberg said on the last
earnings call in late October.
The social media company had in June cut plans to hire engineers
by at least 30%, with Zuckerberg warning employees to brace for
an economic downturn.
Meta's shareholder Altimeter Capital Management in an open
letter to Mark Zuckerberg had previously said the company needs
to streamline by cutting jobs and capital expenditure, adding
that Meta has lost investor confidence as it ramped up spending
and pivoted to the metaverse.
Several technology companies, including Microsoft Corp , Twitter
Inc and Snap Inc have cut jobs and scaled back hiring in recent
months as global economic growth slows due to higher interest
rates, rising inflation and an energy crisis in Europe.
(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; editing by Diane Craft)
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