Facebook’s parent company Meta’s quarterly profit fell again to almost $4.4 billion. The company last recorded such a low quarterly profit in 2017.

The numbers fit a trend; in the first quarter of this year, Meta made more than $7 billion in profit. In the second quarter, that had fallen to more than 6.5 billion.

Meta’s revenue also fell to nearly $28 billion in the third quarter from $29 billion. Although that was slightly higher than experts expected, it still meant the second decline in sales in a row.

Last year, the company invested a lot of money in the so-called Metaverse, the future vision of the Internet by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Additionally, advertisers have become more cautious about their spending due to the poor economic outlook.

Also disappointing numbers Microsoft, Alphabet

Two other big tech companies, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet, also released disappointing third-quarter results for the same reason. They recorded minuses of up to more than 9 percent.

Microsoft reported disappointing growth in its computing division and cloud services sales. The company suffers from high inflation. Profit fell 14 percent.

Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta stocks all fell in value after the earnings release, leaving a heavy mark on Wall Street.