a year ago metas stock was in the midst of a nosedive as wall street grew concerned that threats to the business were increasingly existential but after mark zuckerbergs company formerly known as facebook reported betterthanexpected secondquarter results last week and issued optimistic guidance meta shares jumped to their highest since early 2022 tech investor paul meeks says apple is getting really expensive and needs to get aggressive on ai despite slipping on monday metas stock climbed 11 in july wrapping up its ninth straight month of gains by far the longest such stretch since facebooks ipo in 2012 the stock is now within 17 of its record high from september 2021 driving the dramatic rebound is a series of costslashing measures meta implemented in late 2022 and early 2023 resulting in about 21000 job cuts and a recovery in facebooks online ad business which is finally back to doubledigit growth after apples ios privacy change and a sputtering economy led to three straight quarterly sales declines metas investments in artificial intelligence are also paying off more people are watching shortvideos on the companys tiktoklike reels product and the recent debut and early adoption of the twitter rival called threads has given investors hope that meta can eventually turn the messaging app into a major hit zuckerberg said on last weeks earnings call that hes quite optimistic about threads and its trajectory noting that the product was built by a relatively small team on a tight timeline he added that threads really blew up and created a big opportunity immediately but went on to suggest that the company is nowhere close to trying to monetize the app with easing comps continued aidriven improvements to targeting capabilities and several exciting nascent products and monetization initiatives we think the ongoing meta turnaround has a long runway ahead wrote analysts at canaccord genuity in a note after metas earnings report they have a buy rating on the stock meta has been the secondbest performing stock in the sp 500 this year behind only nvidia  last year it was one of the worst performers in the index losing twothirds of its value kicking off the downward spiral were the stunning revelations in late 2021 from former facebook employee turned whistleblower frances haugen haugens leaking of thousands of pages of internal documents showed that facebook had failed to address various problems affecting its family of apps such as instagrams contribution to the mental health issues of teenagers the public outrage over the revelations put zuckerberg once again in the crosshairs of lawmakers further damaging facebooks reputation after years of concerns with how the platform handled misinformation as facebook shares began their descent zuckerberg renamed his company to meta and told investors of his plan to spend billions of dollars a quarter developing the virtual and augmented reality technologies needed to bring the socalled metaverse to life in the distant future the biggest problem was apple although zuckerberg and other company executives had warned that the ios privacy update would hurt facebooks ability to effectively target ads investors only digested the reality of the situation as earnings reports came up short the company also felt the repercussions of the war in ukraine and russias blacklisting of facebook and instagram in the country while russia only represented about 15 of overall sales meta needed all the revenue it could drum up with advertisers pausing spending because of the shaky economy and competition picking up from rival tiktok meanwhile wall street was growing increasingly concerned about the companys profligate spending on the metaverse then came the cost cuts and zuckerbergs promise early this year that 2023 would be the year of efficiency zuckerberg previously told employees that meta was taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through q1 i want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here i know this is tough for everyone and im especially sorry to those impacted zuckerberg wrote in november of last year under metas costcutting plans zuckerberg said this year that the company would remove layers of middle management that he believed was slowing down important decisions and the company would be proactive on cutting projects that arent performing or may no longer be crucial the financials started looking better in the first quarter as sales grew 3 from the prior year much of the bounce was coming from china where a national easing of tough covid policies led to a boom of chinese companies spending heavily on facebook and instagram ads to target users worldwide meta executives pointed to several positive signs that its business was on the mend more companies particularly retailers were spending money on metas aipowered advantage plus service helping restore the effectiveness of its online advertising system the company touted the increasing use of its shortvideo reels service reels continues to grow while tiktoks future in the us remains uncertain as lawmakers scrutinize the app which is owned by chinas bytedance for alleged national security issues even as the stock pushes higher plenty of concerns remain about the future of meta the companys reality labs unit home to its metaverse investments lost 1372 billion last year and another 37 billion in the first quarter of this year all while sales remain miniscule apple has recently jumped into the vr market with promises of a new headset on the ad side amazons business continues to ramp up and tiktok could still be a threat if it can escape regulatory woes governments around the world are still scrutinizing meta over data privacy and related issues meta cfo susan li said last week that there are broadly speaking increasing legal and regulatory headwinds in the eu and the us that could significantly impact our business and our financial results but for the time being meta investors are celebrating and the picture is clearly much brighter than it was 12 months ago