The day before, the fortune of Meta✴ head Mark Zuckerberg reached $206.2 billion – according to this indicator, he surpassed former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose fortune is estimated at $205.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaire rating. Zuckerberg lags behind Elon Musk, the leader of the rating, by about $50 billion.
Image source: Mark Zuckerberg
Since the beginning of the year, the fortune of Mark Zuckerberg, who owns 13% of Meta✴, has grown by $78 billion – more than any other member of the Bloomberg index. The day before, Meta✴ shares closed at $582.77, which means they have risen in price by 68% since early January, when they cost $346.29. Zuckerberg’s rise to second place shows that his personal wealth is growing along with investor enthusiasm for the social media giant’s earnings growth this year.
Wall Street has indeed been kind to Meta✴ this year, with the company’s earnings reports topping analysts’ estimates every time. In July, the company said its sales rose 22% to $39.07 billion, the fourth straight quarter of revenue growth above 20%. Meta✴ pointed to its significant investments in artificial intelligence, which have helped its online advertising platform increase sales. It suffered a major blow in 2021 when Apple changed its iOS privacy policy, reducing the effectiveness of targeted advertising.
At the end of 2022, Mark Zuckerberg announced a massive cost-cutting plan that included laying off 21,000 employees—a quarter of the company’s workforce. Investors responded positively to this measure, and Meta✴’s advertising business began to recover, thanks in part to strong advertising campaigns from Chinese retailers Temu and Shien. Against this backdrop, investors have become more tolerant of the company’s consistently unprofitable virtual reality technology development business. Last week Meta✴ presented a prototype of Orion augmented reality glasses, which received positive reviews.