Meta, formerly Facebook, faces historic drop as stock tanks
New York, Feb 3: Shares in Facebook parent company Meta are in the midst of their worst day ever Thursday after the social media giant reported a rare decline in profit due to a sharp increase in expenses as it invests heavily in its transformation into a virtual reality-based company.
Meta's shares fell more than 23% to 246.76 in early trading Thursday, lopping off more than 215 billion of the company's overall value, known as its market capitalisation. A drop that big would be the largest ever for a company on a single day. Facebook's market cap dropped 120 billion on July 26, 2018.
The Menlo Park, California, based company said Wednesday that profit declined 8% to 10.29 billion in the final three months of 2021. Revenue rose to 20% to 33.67 billion.
The decline could partly be tied to Meta's spending on its Reality Labs segment which includes its virtual reality headsets and augmented reality technology. Meta invested more than 10 billion in the segment in 2021.
In addition, recent privacy changes by Apple make it harder for companies like Meta to track people for advertising purposes, which also puts pressure on the company's revenue.
On a conference call with analysts Wednesday, Meta's chief financial officer said the company faces a 10 billion headwind from Apple's changes in 2022. Analysts at MoffettNathanson, in a note to clients, called the estimate stunning.
Meta also forecast revenue well below analysts' expectations for the current quarter, due in part to growing competition from TikTok, the company said.
Meta Platforms Inc took on its new name last fall to emphasize CEO Mark Zuckerberg's focus on the metaverse. Since then, the company has been shifting resources and hiring engineers including from competitors like Apple and Google who can help realise his vision. It expanded its workforce by 23%, ending the year with 71,970 employees, mostly in technical roles.
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Delhi court sentences Haryana gangster Vikas Gulia, associate to life imprisonment
New Delhi (PTI): A Delhi court has sentenced Haryana gangster Vikas Gulia and his associate to life imprisonment under MCOCA provisions, but refused the death penalty saying the offences did not fall under the category of 'rarest of the rare cases'.
Additional Sessions Judge Vandana Jain sentenced Gulia and Dhirpal alias Kana to rigorous imprisonment for life under Section 3 (punishment for organised crime) of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
In an order dated December 13, the judge said, "Death sentence can only be awarded in 'rarest of the rare cases' wherein the murder is committed in an extremely inhumane, barbarous, grotesque or dastardly manner as to arouse umbrage of the community at large."
The judge said that on weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, it could be concluded that the present case did not fall under the category, and so, the death penalty could not be imposed upon the convicts.
"Thus, both the convicts are sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life and to pay a fine of Rs 3 lakh each, for committing the offence under Section 3 of MCOCA," she said.
The public prosecutor, seeking the death penalty for both the accused, submitted that they were involved in several unlawful activities while they were on bail in other cases.
He argued that the accused had shown no respect for the law and acted without any fear of legal consequences, and therefore did not deserve any leniency from the court.
The court noted that both convicts were involved in offences of murder, attempt to murder, extortion, robbery, house trespass, and criminal intimidation. Besides, they had misused the liberty of interim bail granted to them by absconding.
It said, "The terror of the convicts was such that it created fear psychosis in the mind of the general public, and they lost complete faith in the law enforcement agencies and chose to accede to the illegal demands of convicts. Despite suffering losses, they could not gather the courage to depose against them."
The court noted that Gulia was involved in at least 18 criminal cases, while Dhirpal had links to 10 serious offences.
It underlined that MCOCA had been enacted "keeping in view the fact that organised crime had come up as a serious threat to society, as it knew no territorial boundaries and is fuelled by illegal wealth generated by committing the offence of extortion, contract killings, kidnapping for ransom, collection of protection money, murder, etc."
Both accused persons had been convicted on December 10 in a case registered at Najafgarh police station. The police filed a chargesheet under Section 3 (punishment for organised crime) and 4 (punishment for possessing unaccountable wealth on behalf of member of organised crime syndicate) of MCOCA.
