Mark Zuckerberg lost more than 18 billion USD in one day, still the fourth richest in the world

Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth “evaporated” more than 18 billion USD after Meta shares fell the deepest since October 2022. According to CNBC, at the end of the trading session on April 25, Meta shares fell 11% as investors reacted to Zuckerberg’s comments during the first quarter business results meeting.

While Meta’s revenue and profit were both better than expected, the company delivered weaker revenue than expected. Zuckerberg said Meta will continue to invest billions of dollars in areas such as AI and virtual universes, even if 98% of revenue still comes from advertising.

CEO Meta himself seemed to predict investors’ reaction when he said: “Historically, our stock fluctuates very strongly during this period, when investments are aimed at expanding the scale of new products but have not yet made money from it.”

Zuckerberg owns about 345 million Class A and Class B shares. When Meta stock price fell to $52.12 on April 25, the value of his securities decreased by about $18 billion, to $152 billion.

The 39-year-old programmer founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. In 2021, he changed the Facebook company name to Meta to signal his plan to focus on the virtual universe instead of social networks. The Reality Labs division, in charge of developing hardware and software serving the metaverse, has accumulated losses of $45 billion since 2020. Meta plans to spend $35 billion to $40 billion in capital expenditures this year.

The Facebook boss’s assets have fluctuated continuously for many years corresponding to Meta shares. In 2022, Zuckerberg will see his net worth decrease by about $100 billion. In early 2023, he announced the company would pursue a “year of efficiency,” a move that tripled the stock price during the year and boosted his net worth.

According to CNBC, despite losing $18 billion on April 25, this is still not the worst day for Zuckerberg. In early 2022, he lost nearly $30 billion in just one day when stocks fell 26% due to weak business reports and disappointing revenue forecasts.

With a net worth of about $152 billion, Zuckerberg remains the world’s fourth-richest person, according to Forbes’ list of billionaires.

He is only “poorer” than three people on the planet, LVMH group boss Bernard Arnault, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

(According to CNBC, Forbes)