Plunged 35% during the year! Meta's market cap has fallen below $600 billion, but this is a positive?

Financial Associated Press (Shanghai editor Liu Rui) news, as the stock price continued to fall for many days, Meta (former Facebook) market value has fallen below $600 billion, but this may bring a positive: Meta may evade new antitrust restrictions.

After releasing unsatisfactory earnings data and forward-looking last week, Meta's stock price experienced a sharp decline. Meta's stock price has fallen 35% since the beginning of 2022.

Meta's share price performed during the year

On Tuesday, the stock closed down 2.1 percent, its market value shrinking to $599.32 billion, below $600 billion for the first time since May 2020.

Before last week's plunge, Meta was also among the five most valuable companies in the U.S., along with Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, and now it has fallen to eighth in the market capitalization rankings and below chipmaker Nvidia, which has a market capitalization of $627 billion.

But it's worth noting that the $600 billion market cap also happens to be the market cap threshold set by members of the U.S. House of Representatives specifically for competition packages for big tech companies. If Meta's market capitalization falls below that threshold, it can bypass the additional hurdles the package puts up for its business and transactions, while larger tech companies such as Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft will remain bound by those rules.

In this package of bills, there are some bills that are clearly very specific to Meta. The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, for example, could have a significant impact on Meta. The bill, originally introduced by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, would make it harder for platform businesses to acquire emerging potential competitors.

Previously, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission had launched an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, accusing it of using acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to maintain a monopoly position.

If this Platform Competition and Opportunity Act is formally legislated and Meta is bound by it, it will be more difficult for the company to make similar acquisitions in the future.

However, this package of bills has not yet been formally enacted and may be quite some time away from being formally enacted. Moreover, in the process of formal legislation, the bill's threshold restrictions are still likely to be modified. For example, a recent Senate bill passed by the Judiciary Committee actually used a lower market threshold than similar Bills in the House of Representatives, which is $550 billion. And, under the original rules, the package bill may still be in effect for a period of time after the company falls below the market capitalization threshold.