On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth plummeted by $29 billion as Meta Platforms Inc’s (FB.O) stock hit a new low, while fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos was set to increase his personal wealth by $20 billion following Amazon’s record results. Meta’s stock dropped 26%, wiping out more nearly $200 billion in the largest single-day market value wipeout in US history. According to Forbes, this lowered Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth to $85 billion.
About 12.8 percent of the tech juggernaut formerly known as Facebook is owned by Zuckerberg. According to Refinitiv data, Bezos, the founder and chairman of e-commerce store Amazon, owns around 9.9% of the company. According to Forbes, he is also the world’s third richest man.
Amazon’s holiday-quarter profit soared thanks to its investments in Rivian, an electric vehicle company, and the company announced it would raise annual Prime subscription prices in the United States, sending its stock up 15% in extended trading and putting it on track for its biggest percentage gain since October 2009 on Friday. According to Forbes, Bezos’ net wealth increased by 57% to $177 billion in 2021 from a year earlier, owing to Amazon’s growth during the pandemic, when people were heavily reliant on internet purchasing.
After Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk’s $35 billion single-day paper loss in November, Zuckerberg’s one-day worth reduction is among the largest ever. Musk, the world’s richest man, has then polled Twitter users on whether he should sell 10% of his ownership in Tesla. Tesla’s stock has failed to fully recover from the ensuing sell-off.
Following the $29 billion loss, Zuckerberg is ranked twelfth on Forbes’ list of real-time billionaires, behind Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani of India.
Last year, before the tech crash of 2021, Zuckerberg sold $4.47 billion worth of Meta shares. The stock sales were part of a pre-determined 10b5-1 trading plan, which executives employ to alleviate insider trading concerns.
Meta’s market capitalization, which is the total value of all its shares, fell sharply from $898.5 billion to $668.4 billion. According to Bloomberg data, this precipitous loss is on track to be the largest market wipeout in US history. Meta reported weaker-than-expected revenue guidance and warned of many problems for its companies this year in its quarterly earnings report. According to sources, investors were frightened by decreased user growth and increased expenses related to the company’s focus on augmented and virtual worlds, and as a result, they dumped shares of the tech behemoth.
For the first time ever, Meta’s fourth-quarter profits revealed a drop in daily users. For the first time in the firm’s 18-year history, the company announced a loss in Facebook users after the market closed on Wednesday. The number of active Facebook users has dropped to 1.93 billion.
Business on Meta’s core platform has stalled, according to the company. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, admitted that the firm is up against stiff competition for users’ time and attention, particularly from TikTok, a video-sharing app. Zuckerberg is increasing his investment in the metaverse project and directing more of Meta’s resources toward its achievement. According to the Forbes report, Facebook spent more than $10 billion in this area last year and expects a “significant increase” in similar spending in 2022.
