Welcome to Insider Trades Daily, glad you're here! Every day, more than 500,000 investors use this newsletter to track insider buying and selling across major public companies. It’s a simple way to see what the people closest to the business are doing with their own money. Before we start sending your daily updates, there’s just one quick thing left to do. Please confirm your subscription using the link below. Click Here to Confirm Your Subscription to Insider Trades Daily It takes a few seconds and helps make sure your newsletter shows up where it belongs, your inbox, not a spam folder. Once you’re confirmed, we’ll take it from there and deliver clear, no-nonsense insider trading insights straight to you. Start Receiving Insider Information The InsiderTrades.com Team P.S. If there's anything we can do to improve your experience, please let us know by replying to this email.
Further Reading from MarketBeat Media
Meta Platforms 10% Layoff Raises a Bigger Question About AI SpendingReported by Leo Miller. Date Posted: 5/21/2026. 
Key Points
- Meta Platforms stock has seen large swings in 2026, being up as much as 12% and down as much as 20%
- Through recently announced layoffs, the company is looking to soothe fears around its elevated spending
- However, shares are not seeing an uptick on this news—here's why
- Special Report: Elon Musk already made me a “wealthy man”
Shares of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) have experienced a notable degree of volatility in 2026. The stock opened the year strong, rising about 12% by the end of January. The company’s impressive Q4 2025 earnings report fueled an more than 10% single-day gain. However, a convergence of pressures then hit the stock. These included artificial intelligence (AI) spending concerns, legal losses, and the U.S.-Iran conflict, which dragged down the market as a whole. By the end of March, Meta was down 20% on the year.
Goldman Sachs just revealed that 40% of AI data centers will be crippled by electricity shortages by 2027 - not chips, not funding, but power. Demand is growing 15% per year and the grid can't keep up.
One small company makes the exact equipment these data centers need. They're sitting on $1.5 billion in orders, their hardware is already inside Musk's Colossus, and the stock still trades like a name nobody's heard of. Analyst Dylan Jovine is releasing the ticker for free. See the stock positioned to solve AI's biggest power crisis
The stock has recovered considerably since then and is now down less than 10% in 2026. Meta’s performance has hovered near this level since the end of April, after shares fell 8.6% following its Q1 2026 earnings report. Meta is taking steps to address the biggest headwind to its performance: rising AI capital expenditure (CapEx) forecasts. The company is carrying out some of its largest layoffs in recent memory in an effort to offset AI investment. However, markets don’t appear to be convinced. Meta Initiates 10% Layoff—But for Much Different Reasons Than in the PastIn mid-May, reports emerged that Meta is laying off 8,000 employees. These job reductions account for approximately 10% of Meta’s total workforce. The move marks the company’s most significant workforce shake-up since its “Year of Efficiency,” which took place between 2022 and 2023. That initiative cut 21,000 jobs. However, there are significant differences between these recent cuts and the Year of Efficiency reductions. Somewhat counterintuitively, Meta undertook one of its most aggressive hiring sprees ever from 2020 to 2022, during the height of the COVID pandemic. By the end of 2022, Meta’s employee count had nearly doubled from the end of 2019, rising from around 45,000 to more than 86,000. This came as COVID lockdowns pushed people to spend much more time online and increase e-commerce purchasing. As a result, Meta’s sales growth soared 37% year over year (YOY) in 2021. The company loaded up on employees, believing that this was the beginning of a long-term tailwind for its business. However, as Meta admitted, that proved not to be the case, with sales dropping 1% YOY in 2022. In 2023, Meta reduced its employee count by 22% to around 67,000 in response. Meta’s past cuts were a product of weaker-than-expected demand. That is not the case today. Meta just posted its highest revenue growth in years at 33% YOY. Demand is clearly strong, but it is being met with greater investment in technology rather than employees. In that sense, the move is much less a sign of weakness than the mass layoffs of the past. Layoffs Are Unlikely to Win Over Investors' HeartsStill, Meta shares haven’t really moved since the recent layoffs began. This suggests investors likely do not believe the cuts will have a major impact on the company’s financials. Notably, analysts at Morgan Stanley have estimated that a 20% workforce reduction would generate annual savings of between $3 billion and $7 billion. At 10%, it's fair to say that this forecast would likely fall to roughly $1.5 billion to $3.5 billion. Meta will also likely incur a significant charge to pay for severance packages. When it cut 10,000 employees in March 2023, its expected pre-tax severance charge and other personnel costs were $1 billion, which equates to $100,000 per employee. Assuming that per-employee figure holds steady, the company may incur around $800 million in charges from the latest layoff, reducing the net near-term benefit. Overall, Meta’s savings would be a drop in the bucket compared to the midpoint of its 2026 CapEx guidance of $135 billion. Furthermore, it's unclear whether Meta will simply direct any savings from layoffs toward additional AI investment, or whether its CapEx guide will hold steady. Either way, compared with its massive CapEx spending, the potential benefit of the layoffs is unlikely to be a major needle mover. This is probably one reason shares have not benefited. Additionally, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that he “does not expect more company-wide layoffs this year." This pushes back on earlier reports that the company would lay off 20% of its workforce in 2026. Investors may have viewed the smaller-than-expected cuts as a disappointment. Growth Is the Key to Meta’s AI JourneyIn aggregate, this data shows that Meta will not be able to justify its AI spending through layoffs alone. Rather, the company will need to grow its revenues, and eventually free cash flow, to do so. In this context, the fact that Meta is also reassigning 7,000 employees to AI-related roles may be more impactful than the layoffs themselves. After the layoffs, Meta’s employee count will fall to around 71,000. Thus, the firm will reallocate around 10% of its remaining workforce to AI-related roles. This increased focus on AI could help the company better leverage its investments and drive growth. |
