Facebook Lost $120 Billion In Market Cap: Here's Some Perspective

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.

Experts React

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.

Since September 2014, “only once has a FANG stock gapped down by more than 15%. (Netflix in October of 2014.)” - @bespokeinvest

Here’s how they finish the day: pic.twitter.com/DCsNIeKrpE

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) July 26, 2018

CNBC’s Joe Terranova tweeted that Facebook’s day is historically bad.

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.

#Facebook is heading for an undesirable record! Largest USD market cap loss of all time. ht @ArendJanKamp pic.twitter.com/nuIT43lYkD

— jeroen blokland (@jsblokland) July 26, 2018

Value Destruction

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.

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