Investors punish Zuckerberg as costly metaverse pitch falls flat

Wall Street is losing patience over Meta (META.O) boss Mark Zuckerberg's enormous and experimental bets on his metaverse project that helped drive up the company's overall costs by a fifth in the third quarter, Qazet.az reports.

Investors rushed to dump Meta Platforms Inc's stock after hours, pushing it down 20% and wiping $67 billion off its market value after the company posted its fourth straight decline in quarterly profit.

The Facebook-parent said its overall expenses could rise as much as 16% next year and anticipates that operating losses at Reality Labs - the unit responsible for bringing the metaverse to life - "will grow significantly" next year.

One Meta shareholder had recently voiced concerns calling the company's investments "super-sized and terrifying". Analysts on Wednesday called them "confusing and confounding" and Meta's inability to cut costs "extremely disturbing".