Meta the parent company of Facebook is currently the S&P 500s worst performer for the year.

Meta the parent company of Facebook is currently the S&P 500s worst performer for the year. As of Thursday, the social networking behemoth was the worst performer in the S&P 500 as Meta shares dropped to fresh lows.

The stock market index’s bottom tier of businesses, Align Technology, Generac Holdings, SVB Financial Group, and Match Group, are all performing worse than Meta shares, which have down almost 73% over the past year.

The parent company of Facebook has been grappling with a plethora of issues that have alarmed investors and caused its shares to drop.

For instance, Meta released disappointing fourth-quarter guidance in October that fell short of analyst forecasts and recorded its second consecutive quarterly sales decline. The looming recession has led businesses to cut back on advertising spending, and Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update has continued to have an impact, making it more challenging for the company to track users across the Internet. These and other issues are among the many reasons given by Meta for the revenue decline.

Investors also seem to be worried about Meta’s costly venture into creating the metaverse, the virtual world that users of virtual reality and augmented reality headsets may enter. According to Meta, the metaverse will be the next big thing in computing. If the company gets a head start on creating the technologies that underpin the idea.

However, creating the metaverse is not cheap; as of 2022, Meta’s Reality Labs business section, which is in charge of its VR and AR endeavors, has lost $9.4 billion. These losses “will climb dramatically year over year,” according to the corporation.

Beyond 2023, Meta stated, “We aim to schedule Reality Labs investments such that we may achieve our goal of long-term growth of overall company operating income.”