Meta Platforms, the new parent-company of social media giant Facebook, announced fourth quarter earnings that came in below expectations, causing the stock to plugde over 26% for its worst session ever on Thursday. Given Meta's prominence in various exchange-traded funds (ETF), this downturn impacted the performance of a range of funds.
Meta's stock is currently held within 322 different ETFs, according to ETF.com, with several funds holding more than 10% of the stock in their portfolios.
The Communication Services Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE: XLC), which has the largest allocation of Meta compared to all ETFs, dropped over 6% on Thursday, while other communications funds like Vanguard Communications Services ETF (NYSE: VOX) and Fidelity MSCI Communications Services ETF (NYSE: FCOM) both fell over 5%. Meta makes up 22.4% of XLC, 17.3% of VOX, and 13.7% of FCOM.
Meta also holds large weight in SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE: SPY) at 1.9% and the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ) at 4.8%. Market benchmarks like the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite Index fell lower on Thursday, pulled 2.4% and 3.7%, respectively lower from Meta's losses.
Meta's downturn came after its subsidiary Facebook reported a decline in daily active users from the previous quarter for the first time ever. The company also attributed a weak Q1 guidance to Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) privacy changes, with the company expecting to lose $10 billion due to iOS's new privacy settings, CFO David Wehner told investors during the company's earnings call Wednesday evening.
Facebook also pointed to increased competition in the social media space from apps like ByteDance's TikTok as one of the reasons its losing active users and forecasting slower growth.
Meta's prominence throughout the broader ETF space shows the risk of only owning ETFs that give a large portion of their portfolio to a single stock. That outsized allocation may lead to the fund's performance is tied to the single stock, which is what happened as Meta was one of the sole drivers of the communications sector.