Facebook on Thursday posted the largest one-day loss in market value by any company in U.S. stock market history after releasing a disastrous quarterly report.

The social media giant's market capitalization plummeted by $119 billion to $510 billion as its stock price plummeted by 19 percent. At Wednesday's close, Facebook's market cap had totaled nearly $630 billion, according to FactSet.

No company in the history of the U.S. stock market has ever lost $100 billion in market value in just one day, but two came close.

On Sept. 22, 2000, Intel shed $90.74 billion in market value as the dot-com bubble burst. Earlier that year, Microsoft lost $80 billion from its market cap in one day.

Other companies that have experienced similar one-day losses in dollar amount include Apple in 2013, when it lost $59.6 billion, and Exxon Mobil in 2008, when it lost $52.5 billion.

Facebook's enormous loss in value came a day after the company reported weaker-than-expected revenue for the second quarter as well as disappointing global daily active users, a key metric for Facebook. The company also said it expects its revenue growth rate to slow in the second half of this year.</s>At market close yesterday, Facebook Inc. was worth $630 billion.

That roughly $120 billion loss in market cap tops the list of biggest one-day routs in recent stock market history — and by a very wide, $30-billion margin.

Facebook stock FB, -18.96% ended down 19% on Thursday, its ugliest single-session decline since it became a publicly traded entity on May 18, 2012. According to WSJ Market Data, Facebook’s drop is the biggest one-day loss in history among the current top 25 companies by market cap and some other notables.

Some more perspective on just how huge a number $120 billion is (in case you need that): The drop is larger than the individual market caps of 464 of the 500 companies in the S&P 500, or 92.8% of them. And if you were to add up the market caps of the bottom 21 companies in the S&P 500, it’s bigger than that, too.

Related: One millennial options trader was killing it, then Facebook cost him $180,000

The stock to come closest to Facebook’s nightmare day was Intel on Sept. 22, 2000, during the fallout of the dot-com bust. Intel INTC, -0.51% lost $91 billion that day, with the stock tumbling 22%, after it revealed weakening demand in Europe and projected revenue growth far below what analysts were expecting.

Next up on the disaster hit list is Microsoft’s MSFT, -1.09% $80 billion drop on April 3, 2000, also in the days of the dot-com fallout. Then comes Apple’s AAPL, -0.31% January 2013 drop, when lackluster earnings results and a slew of analyst price-target cuts caused it to shed nearly $60 billion in market cap in one day — and lose its title of world’s most valuable company.

But by the end of 2013, Apple’s market cap was back above its level before that massive one-day drop and, of course, it has long since regained the title of most valuable company (Amazon’s recent surge notwithstanding) — some history that Facebook investors may want to keep in mind in the months ahead.</s>NEW YORK (CBS) — Facebook lost about $119 billion of its value on Thursday, marking the biggest one-day loss in U.S. market history.

The company’s shares plunged $41.24, or almost 19 percent, to $176.26 a day after the social media giant reported disappointing results. The slide is the largest decline in market capitalization in history, exceeding Intel’s $91 billion single-day loss in September 2000, according to Bloomberg data.

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his fortune drop by $15.9 billion to roughly $71 billion. His personal loss alone, if only on paper, exceeds the value of companies such as Molson Coors and Macy’s, which have market values of $14 billion and $12 billion, respectively.

Investors were spooked by Facebook’s forecast showing that its number of active users is growing less quickly than expected, while the company also took a hit from Europe’s new privacy laws.

The report, which marked Facebook’s first full quarter since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, startled investors with a bevy of red flags about setbacks to its revenue and user growth. Indeed, the drop Thursday morning was sharper than the multi-day stock slide in March following revelations of data misappropriation by Cambridge and others. (Facebook shares dropped 17.8 percent then, bottoming out at $151.65 on March 28.)

“The perceived narrative surrounding Facebook has changed after yesterday’s earnings announcement,” said Jeff Henriksen, managing partner at Thorpe Abbotts Capital. “The market seems to be questioning the quality of growth seen in the past.”

The share collapse merely returned Facebook shares to a level last seen in early May, a sign of just how bullish investor expectations had been running. At that time, the stock was still recovering from an earlier battering over a major privacy scandal.

Facebook is hardly a stranger to a volatile stock price and has rebounded from previous mishaps, including Cambridge Analytica. While several analysts downgraded the stock, others say they still have faith in the company to grow over the long-term.

“Even the best hitters strike out sometimes,” wrote Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, who lowered his 12-month price target to $250 from $275, in a research report. “In our view, the sell-off is overdone and largely unwarranted.”

Still, investors weren’t prepared for many of the bombshells dropped by Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner.</s>Facebook stock collapse wipes out $119 billion in market value, one of the worst single-day losses in history

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook stock collapse wipes out $119 billion in market value, one of the worst single-day losses in history.</s>NEW YORK (CBSNews/AP) — Facebook lost about $119 billion of its value on Thursday, marking the biggest one-day loss in U.S. market history.

The company’s shares plunged $41.24, or almost 19 percent, to $176.26 a day after the social media giant reported disappointing results. The slide is the largest decline in market capitalization in history, exceeding Intel’s $91 billion single-day loss in September 2000, according to Bloomberg data.

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his fortune drop by $15.9 billion to roughly $71 billion. His personal loss alone, if only on paper, exceeds the value of companies such as Molson Coors and Macy’s, which have market values of $14 billion and $12 billion, respectively.

Investors were spooked by Facebook’s forecast showing that its number of active users is growing less quickly than expected, while the company also took a hit from Europe’s new privacy laws.

The report, which marked Facebook’s first full quarter since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, startled investors with a bevy of red flags about setbacks to its revenue and user growth. Indeed, the drop Thursday morning was sharper than the multi-day stock slide in March following revelations of data misappropriation by Cambridge and others. (Facebook shares dropped 17.8 percent then, bottoming out at $151.65 on March 28.)

“The perceived narrative surrounding Facebook has changed after yesterday’s earnings announcement,” said Jeff Henriksen, managing partner at Thorpe Abbotts Capital. “The market seems to be questioning the quality of growth seen in the past.”

The share collapse merely returned Facebook shares to a level last seen in early May, a sign of just how bullish investor expectations had been running. At that time, the stock was still recovering from an earlier battering over a major privacy scandal.

Facebook is hardly a stranger to a volatile stock price and has rebounded from previous mishaps, including Cambridge Analytica. While several analysts downgraded the stock, others say they still have faith in the company to grow over the long-term.

“Even the best hitters strike out sometimes,” wrote Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, who lowered his 12-month price target to $250 from $275, in a research report. “In our view, the sell-off is overdone and largely unwarranted.”

Still, investors weren’t prepared for many of the bombshells dropped by Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner.

A hit from Europe

 European advertising revenue growth in Europe “decelerated more quickly than other regions,” partially because of the new European privacy laws, Wehner said. That surprised investors because of the belief that the new laws wouldn’t hurt revenue.

The new laws were only in effect for one month of the quarter, which means the company may feel more of an impact in the current quarter. The new regulations are also affecting user growth in the region because of the impact of requiring consumers to opt-in to Facebook and to linking their accounts to third-party websites, Pachter said.

“The implementation of GDPR gave a large number of Facebook users control over their privacy, and it should have been patently obvious to investors (and to us) that allowing users control would result in slightly lower engagement,” he noted, alluding to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation privacy rules.

Over the long term, GDPR may end up favoring Facebook and other large companies that have the resources to adapt to new requirements. They could similarly disadvantage smaller, lesser known companies that don’t have the resources to comply and which could face big fines if they don’t.

Instagram worthy?

 Some investors were also dismayed with Facebook’s revelation about Instagram Stories, which allow users to post videos or photos that disappear after a day. Like Facebook, Instagram depends on ads to generate revenue, and Stories is supposed to help sell more ads.

But Wehner said the product has “lower levels of monetization,” while adding that the company plans to invest in growing the service. “That’s going to have a negative impact on revenue growth,” he noted.

Profitability woes

 Facebook has drawn investors because of its fast growth of users and profits. Yet both categories are facing headwinds. In case of the latter, Wehner noted that “total expense growth will exceed revenue growth in 2019,” pushing down operating margins.

Investors closely watch operating margins because they serve as an important metric for profitability. The lower the operating margin, the less profitable the business. Facebook warned that its operating margins would fall from its current 44 percent to the “mid-30s.”

So is it time to unfriend Facebook? Some analysts argue that its long-term outlook is favorable, with RBC Capital Markets’ Mark Mahaney writing that the sell-off may represent “one of the best entry points you can get on FB,” according to Bloomberg.

And in the view of BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, Facebook is making an investment that will pay off down the road.

“Facebook is actively choosing to make less money, deprioritizing near-term monetization to drive engagement to even higher levels to capture even more of their 2.5 billion monthly users’ time and attention,” he wrote. “Legacy media executives… should not be rejoicing — they should be afraid, very afraid.”</s>Facebook just had the biggest wipeout in stock market history.

Shares plunged 19% on Thursday after executives warned that revenue growth would slow as the company focuses on user privacy.

The sell-off vaporized about $119 billion in market value — the biggest single-day loss for any public company in history, according to Thomson Reuters.

For founder Mark Zuckerberg, the loss came to almost $16 billion, according to Forbes, which tracks billionaire wealth in real time. That dropped him from fourth to sixth on the list of richest people in the world.

Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said on a conference call with investors that Facebook is “putting privacy first” after the Cambridge Analytica scandal triggered a wave of horrible press, customer angst and regulatory scrutiny around the world.

As an example of its new strategy, Wehner said Facebook will put more development muscle behind the company’s Stories feature. That will put a drag on sales because Facebook makes more money on its core News Feed than its other products.

Facebook says it will spend a lot of money to accomplish its goals. Wehner said the company will invest billions of dollars per year improving safety and security after a bruising period of headlines about Facebook’s role in enabling fake news and election meddling.

“We think that’s the right thing to do for the business,” he said.

The company’s previous worst single-day performance was July 27, 2012, when the stock fell 11.7%. The stock tanked that day after the company failed to convince investors that it could sell mobile advertising. Mobile now makes up 91% of the company’s advertising revenue.</s>File photo shows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as he spoke during a press conference in Paris, France on May 23, 2018.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lost more than $15 billion in stock wealth Thursday as investors dumped shares after the social network warned of slowing sales growth.

The massive one-day loss pushed the 34-year-old out of the top 5 in Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires as he drops from the #4 spot to #6 with a net worth of $67 billion.

He now trails Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ($149 billion), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ($95 billion), LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault ($84 billion), Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett ($83 billion) and Amancio Ortega ($72 billion), founder of retailing group Inditex.

Facebook shares plunged 19 percent Thursday to $176.26 as the company shed about $100 billion in market value.

It was the tech company’s largest stock drop ever and was the biggest stock-market wipeout for a U.S. company ever, according to Bloomberg.

Triggering the stock sell-off: The company said its sales growth would continue to slow through the rest of the year and cited higher expenses related to user security.

More: Why Facebook had its worst day ever (and yes, Cambridge Analytica is partly to blame)

More: Wipe out! Facebook sheds $120B in market value on fears about user growth

More: Facebook one-day loss is more than what these companies are worth

To keep things in perspective, Zuckerberg’s compensation at the tech company clocks in at about 37 times higher than the average Facebook employee, according to its 2017 proxy.

The median compensation for a Facebook employee was $240,000 in 2017, compared to Zuckerberg’s $8.85 million.</s>SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook shares dove 19 percent Thursday, shedding about $100 billion in market value, for the biggest ever one-day wipeout of stock market value for any U.S. company.

The decline, fueled by the social network's slowing growth, already marked Facebook's largest stock market drop ever, eclipsing a 12 percent drop on July 27, 2012. Another 7 percent drop on March 19, the Monday after news of the Cambridge Analytica crisis broke, caused a $36.4 billion decline in Facebook's market value.

Facebook's one-day swoon surpassed Intel's $91 billion loss in September 2000, the previous largest loss of value in one day, according to Bloomberg. The drop was based on all shares outstanding, according to Bloomberg.

Other tech stocks sold off, too, Thursday. Facebook competitor Twitter was down 3%.

Chief financial officer David Wehner triggered the selloff when late Wednesday he said Facebook's sales growth would continue to slow through the rest of the year. Shares, which had already declined 7 percent after hours, then tumbled further after the comments on a conference call with analysts.

Despite the steep drop of one of Wall Street’s long-time market leaders, its pain did not spill over to the broader U.S. stock market. The broad Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, which includes Facebook and 499 other big U.S. companies, lost 0.3 percent. The Nasdaq Composite lost 1 percent.

Despite fears that the other so-called FAANG stocks – which include Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet – would be infected by Facebook’s outlook, those fears were not realized.

First full report since Cambridge Analytica

Facebook's sell-off points to growing concerns that Facebook will not emerge unscathed from the many controversies it faces.The stock slide began right after Facebook reported second-quarter results after the market closed Wednesday. It was the first full financial report since Facebook became embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March.

The problem: weaker-than-expected revenue growth, Facebook's first such miss since 2015. It recorded sales of $13.23 billion for the three months ended in June, short of the $13.3 billion Wall Street anticipated.

Also alarming to investors: Facebook's growth is slowing with users in some of its most lucrative markets. Facebook reported its slowest growth rate ever, with 2.23 billion people logging in at least once a month in June, below the 2.25 billion analysts expected.

Growth in the number of users who logged in each day fell short, too, up 11 percent year-over-year at 1.47 billion but still less than the 1.49 billion anticipated. Daily usage was unchanged in Facebook's biggest market, the United States and Canada, at 185 million daily users. Facebook saw a decline in Europe to 279 million daily users.

Net income was $5.11 billion, or $1.74 a share, beating analysts' estimate of $1.71 a share.

Facebook used to be made out of corporate Teflon. Controversies came and went, but nothing stuck. And it seemed Facebook would shrug off the recent rash of scandals, too — Russian election interference, the mishandling of as many as 87 million people's personal information by Cambridge Analytica and the unchecked spread of fabricated news. Shares a record high Wednesday before the results.

Even after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic and federal agencies began to probe Facebook, prompting calls for increased regulation, investors and advertisers were undeterred, propelling the stock to new highs.

On Wednesday the initial fallout from Cambridge Analytica appeared in Facebook's financial results and forecast and it was a game changer.

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser, who has a sell rating on the stock, says there are limits to growth in digital advertising, even for Facebook.

"Deceleration such as management guided towards suggests that, while the company is still growing at a fast clip, the days of 30% plus growth are numbered," Wieser wrote in a research note.</s>Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) plunged 19 percent Thursday after the company’s second-quarter earnings report. Incredibly, the earnings crash shaved more than $120 billion off of the company’s market cap in a matter of hours.

Facebook’s disastrous day has been the talk of Wall Street. CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla tweeted that only one other time since September 2014 has a FANG stock to gap down by more than 15 percent following a quarterly earnings report.

In fact, Facebook’s trading action on Thursday could result in the most destruction of value by a single stock in a single day ever. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) currently holds the record for biggest single-day market cap loss at $90 billion during the bursting of the dot com bubble back in September of 2000.

Just how much value have investors lost? General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) and salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM) all have market caps of less than $120 billion. In fact, so does 91 percent of the entire S&P 500. A $120 market cap represents more than twice the size of General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) and about four times the size of Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE: LUV). A $120 billion loss is more than the annual gross domestic product of Ukraine ($109.3 billion) and Puerto Rico ($98.8 billion).

Unfortunately for millennials, young investors are taking a large portion of the Facebook hit. Last year, TD Ameritrade reported that Facebook was the second most commonly-owned stock among millennial investors.

Facebook shares closed Thursday at $176.25. Its market cap now stands at around $503.5 billion.

Facebook 'Hit Reset' On Expectations: Wall Street Responds To The Lackluster Quarter</s>SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook lost about $130 billion in market value in just two hours, its steepest stock decline ever, after warning of slowing sales growth.

The stock, which plunged as much as 24% in after-hours trading Wednesday, had a cascading effect on competitors Snap and Twitter, which dropped, too. Traders are bracing for a decline in tech stocks when the markets open Thursday.

Chief financial officer David Wehner triggered the selloff when he said sales growth would continue to slow through the rest of the year. Shares, which had already declined 7 percent after hours, then fell as much as 24 percent after the comments on a conference call with analysts.

The personal wealth of Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg took a major hit. He lost $16.8 billion in extended trading. If that loss holds through Thursday’s close, he will slip to sixth place from third in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

After-hours declines don't always hold the next day. But the sell-off points to growing concerns that Facebook will not emerge unscathed from the many controversies it faces.

The stock slide began right after Facebook reported second-quarter results after the market closed Wednesday. It was the first full financial report since Facebook became embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March. Shares, which hit a record high Wednesday, plunged as much as 11% after Facebook posted the results.

The problem: weaker-than-expected revenue growth, Facebook's first such miss since 2015. It recorded sales of $13.23 billion for the three months ended in June, short of the $13.3 billion Wall Street anticipated.

Also alarming to investors: Facebook's growth is slowing with users in some of its most lucrative markets. Facebook reported its slowest growth rate ever, with 2.23 billion people logging in at least once a month in June, below the 2.25 billion analysts expected.

Growth in the number of users who logged in each day fell short, too, up 11 percent year-over-year at 1.47 billion but still less than the 1.49 billion anticipated. Daily usage was unchanged in Facebook's biggest market, the United States and Canada, at 185 million daily users. Facebook saw a decline in Europe to 279 million daily users.

Net income was $5.11 billion, or $1.74 a share, beating analysts' estimate of $1.71 a share.

Facebook used to be made out of corporate Teflon. Controversies came and went, but nothing stuck. And it seemed Facebook would shrug off the recent rash of scandals, too — Russian election interference, the mishandling of as many as 87 million people's personal information by Cambridge Analytica and the unchecked spread of fabricated news.

Even after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic and federal agencies began to probe Facebook, prompting calls for increased regulation, investors and advertisers were undeterred, propelling the stock to new highs.

On Wednesday the initial fallout from Cambridge Analytica appeared in Facebook's financial results and forecast and it was a game changer.

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser, who has a sell rating on the stock, says there are limits to growth in digital advertising, even for Facebook.

"Deceleration such as management guided towards suggests that, while the company is still growing at a fast clip, the days of 30% plus growth are numbered," Wieser wrote in a research note.
Facebook stocks drop 20% (US$118 billion), setting a record as the biggest single stock market loss in one day, and marking the first time that a stock lost over $100 billion in one day.