After a week of changes including a ticker change and longtime COO Sheryl Sandberg stepping down, Meta's future may seem uncertain. Cheddar News anchors Kristen Scholer and Ken Buffa broke it all down a the stock dropped around 4 percent on Friday amid a flurry of speculation around the company formerly known as Facebook.

Closing Bell

Stock of the Week: Meta's Many Changes and Uncertain Future

Welcome back to Cheddar news is closing. Bell can boot for here with the one and only kristen Schoeller. Now Kristin our stock of the week is facebook parent company metal as the company shifts its focus away from social media and towards the metaverse is also undergoing a few big changes, including a C suite shakeup. Now the stock this week has has has had, you can see a downturn, you can see it's down about 8/10 of a percent and next week marks the final days for the FB ticker symbol that you see on your screen on thursday, the company's ticker symbol officially becomes a meta symbolizing gets pushed into the metaverse, including VR headsets, virtual worlds and much more now shares of meta right now Check are down about 4.1 and you're like we said, big changes going into the metaverse to having some C suite shakeups, including one of the pioneers that really brought facebook meta to where it is today. Yes. So despite kind of a mixed week on the market's kind of does look like meta stock has lower these past at least four trading sessions certainly since that Cheryl Sandberg News hit, but as you mentioned, it's not the only company that's seen a change like this. So this week long time at facebook executive. Yes, Sheryl Sandberg announcing that she's going to step down from that C. 00 role after 14 years at facebook's parent company now called meta. Sandberg's departure, marking the end of a certain brand of corporate feminism, Some say boosted by her 2013 book titled Linen. Well, she started a new conversation about women in the workplace absolutely advocating that they assert themselves at work and at home. And in recent months, she seems to have followed her own advice, reportedly telling colleagues that she feels burnt out and like she's become a punching bag representing the company's various scandals. Sandberg notably helping create facebook's ad driven model, capitalizing on user data, which has fueled the business for over a decade. That model now under scrutiny amid Apple's user privacy changes, reports about the addictive nature of the company's apps and their impact on users, mental health and more so, Sandberg is gonna be replaced by another longtime facebook executive, Javier Olivant, who has helped the company pursue global expansion in the role of chief growth officer. Over 91% of Mendez monthly users now come from outside the us and Canada according to the company's first quarter earnings report. Now Olive, it is likely to have a lot on his plate when he takes over. Sandberg is this part departing as meta faces growing pressure joining its big tech peers as it sees a slowdown in growth implements hiring freezes and pursues other cost cutting strategies and meta has been hurt by the rise of Tiktok, Apple's IOS ad tracking changes in a broader selloff in tech stocks, even though Apple's IOS change went into effect last year, meta has lost billions of dollars in ad revenue over the past several quarters. Ceo Mark Zuckerberg has tried to assure employees that the company has a big enough balance sheet and is in a strong position to navigate a potential market downturn. Zuckerberg also recently announced hiring freezes for several divisions, including teams working on new products like facebook dating, facebook, gaming messenger for kids, the company's e commerce team and more. And it's reality labs employees which are working on the company's metaverse products and programs are not entirely immune to shifting priorities. That's right ken. So while the CTO Andrew bosworth says it's unlikely people will be laid off. He did tell reality labs employees that some projects will be deprived prioritized in favor of others and employees will not move out of the business unit and specific team changes haven't been communicated yet. But the decision. Communist analysts and critics alike continue to express skepticism about how successful these companies pivot into the metaverse will actually be. How sensible is it now, while the company does have a track record of successfully turning products and features into key revenue drivers, many expected a fully functioning metaverse platform in integration into the corporate world and other spaces is still years away. So while the company has recently opened up brick and mortar stores to sell its headsets and other equipment as we're showing on the screen, it's also burning through cash and last year reality labs reporting massive losses totaling more than 10 billion and while in line with Zuckerberg's projections, the loss did drag on metas overall profitability For 20 and 21, so we'll keep an eye on that one.