Quarterly earnings for Facebook’s parent company Meta have fallen again, to nearly $4.4 billion. The company last reported low quarterly earnings in 2017.

The numbers match the trend. In the first quarter of this year, Meta still generated more than $7 billion in revenue. In the second quarter, that fell to more than 6.5 billion.

Meta revenue also declined in the third quarter, from $29 billion to nearly $28 billion. This was slightly higher than experts had expected, but still meant the second consecutive decline in trading volume.

Last year, the company invested a lot of money in the so-called metaverse, the future vision of the Internet for Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Moreover, advertisers are becoming more cautious in their spending due to the poor economic outlook.

For the same reason, two other major tech companies, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet, posted disappointing numbers in the third quarter. They scored negatives of more than 9 percent.

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

Shares of Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta all plummeted after the quarterly figures were released, leaving a heavy footprint on Wall Street.