- Altimeter Capital Chairman and CEO Brad Gerstner wrote an open letter Metaplatforms Inc META and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it was overstaffed and moving too slowly to maintain investor confidence.
- Gerstner proposed that Meta cut personnel expenses by 20% and limit its expensive investments in “Metaverse” technology to no more than $5 billion yearly.
- “Meta needs to rebuild trust with investors, employees and the tech community to attract, inspire and retain the best people in the world,” said Gerstner.
- Meta stock is down over 61% so far in 2022.
- Also read: Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse strategies are raising concerns among VR developers
- At the end of the second quarter of this year, Altimeter Capital held over 2 million shares of Meta, CNBC reports.
- Meta was rebranded by Facebook to better focus on its VR hardware and software, spending $10 billion annually on the tech.
- He said it could be a decade before the estimated fortune the company is currently spending developing VR will bear fruit.
- “An estimated investment of over $100 billion in an unknown future is outrageous and daunting, even by Silicon Valley standards,” Gerstner wrote.
- The expense controls would help Meta double its free cash flow and improve its share price.
- Meta’s internal documents reflected Metaverse’s struggle with technology, users, and a lack of clarity for nearly a year after its renaming.
- Meta initially set a goal of reaching 500,000 monthly active users for Horizon Worlds by the end of this year, but has revised that number to 280,000 in recent weeks. The current number is less than 200,000.
- Unlike TikTok and Meta’s Instagram, Metaverse lacked any money-making opportunities for its creators.
- Price promotion: META shares traded 0.62% higher to $130.81 on the latest check Monday.
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