The headline was ominous.
“Meta’s perfect storm: fleeing users and Apple privacy changes hit ads business.”
That’s the Financial Times title, back in February 2022, capturing Meta Platforms’ (NASDAQ: META) woes.
Take a moment and guess — if you saw this title, how many users would you have thought Meta lost?
A hundred million? Fifty million?
Try one million.
That’s right.
The “perfect storm” that shook the financial media and sent Meta’s shares spiralling was the loss of one million daily active users.
So, that’s the perfect storm?
Here’s the important context: even after losing a million users, Facebook still had 1.93 billion daily active users (DAUs) when the article was posted.
It’s like comparing an ikan bilis with a blue whale. The loss didn’t even register.
There are lessons here for investors.
A Storm in a Teacup
When a company gets into trouble, its ability to bounce back tells you a lot about the character of the leadership and the quality of the company.
What’s more, the negative headlines often pull wool over your eyes, obscuring your view of the good things that are happening in the business.
While the media was penning obituaries, Meta quietly built not one, not two, but three new US$10 billion businesses in less than two years.
Reels, Meta’s short-form video answer to TikTok, went from virtually nothing to a US$10 billion annual revenue run rate by mid-2023.
That’s just the start.
Before the end of 2025, Reels’ annualised sales had surpassed a whopping US$50 billion.
Click-to-Message ads, which allow businesses to start conversations with customers through Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram Direct, also hit a US$10 billion run rate.
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, Meta’s AI-powered advertising suite, reached a US$10 billion run rate by late 2023.
By the end of 2024, annualised sales doubled to over US$20 billion.
Today, more than eight million advertisers use at least one of Meta’s generative AI creative tools.
The key lesson is two-fold: even the best companies can stumble.
But how it bounces back is where you discover the mettle of the leadership — and Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has brought the company to the next level each and every time.
The kicker?
Today, Meta has 3.56 billion DAU across its Family of Apps.
That’s well over 1.60 billion more DAUs compared to February 2022, when the financial media were busy writing Meta’s obituary.
Suffice to say, the “perfect storm” turned out to be nothing more than a storm in a teacup.
Why is this story important today?
Fast forward to today and Meta’s obituary is being written again.
This time, it’s a New York Times opinion piece, claiming that the social media company is dying.
The reason?
Meta just lost 20 million users, largely due to internet disruptions in Iran and a restriction on access to WhatsApp in Russia.
Does that sound familiar?
Predictably, the financial media is making a meal of the losses again.
They may be running out of superlatives — if the loss of a million users was a “perfect storm,” then 20 million must be like a “tornado of perfect storms” or something.
But I digress; coming up with superlatives is their job.
Our job as investors is to separate the signal from the noise.
And here’s something I have learned: holding a stock for the long term has the hidden benefit of watching leaders endure short-term challenges and come out ahead, time and time again.
Today, Meta’s share price is down close to 23% from its high.
It’s not the first time.
As a shareholder of Meta Platforms for over a decade, I have seen the stock fall by over 20% — and more — multiple times.
It’s part and parcel of holding for the long term.
Each time the mettle of the leadership was challenged.
Each time they found an extra gear to kick in and drive the business even higher.
So, if I had to guess, I would err on the side of the leadership.
It’s not a blind guess — because it’s a conviction borne out of watching the business for over a decade.
This is just one of the companies that caught my eye recently.
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Disclosure: Chin Hui Leong owns shares of Meta Platforms.
