Meta Platforms Inc is planning to start large-scale layoffs this week that may have an effect on hundreds of staff, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday citing folks aware of the matter, with an announcement deliberate as early as Wednesday.

Meta declined to touch upon the WSJ report.

Facebook dad or mum Meta in October forecasted a weak vacation quarter and considerably extra prices subsequent 12 months wiping about $67 billion off Meta’s inventory market worth, including to the greater than half a trillion {dollars} in worth already misplaced this 12 months.

The disappointing outlook comes as Meta is contending with slowing international financial development, competitors from TikTok, privateness adjustments from Apple, considerations about huge spending on the metaverse and the ever-present menace of regulation.

Chief government Mark Zuckerberg has stated he expects the metaverse investments to take a couple of decade to bear fruit. In the meantime, he has needed to freeze hiring, shutter tasks and reorganize groups to trim prices.

“In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today” Zuckerberg stated on the final earnings name in late October.

The social media firm had in June lower plans to rent engineers by at the very least 30%, with Zuckerberg warning staff to brace for an financial downturn.

Meta’s shareholder Altimeter Capital Management in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg had beforehand stated the corporate must streamline by slicing jobs and capital expenditure, including that Meta has misplaced investor confidence because it ramped up spending and pivoted to the metaverse.

Several know-how corporations, together with Microsoft Corp , Twitter Inc and Snap Inc have lower jobs and scaled again hiring in latest months as international financial development slows resulting from increased rates of interest, rising inflation and an power disaster in Europe.

(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; enhancing by Diane Craft)