So far this year, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) and Facebook, has posted a $9 billion increase in net worth to $217 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire list. He is behind Elon Musk, the world’s richest person. A ban of TikTok, which competes with Zuckerberg, could help keep his net worth moving up.
Unlike Musk, Zuckerberg does not have a lot of other huge investments. Musk owns pieces of SpaceX and xAI. Together, the value of these two investments could certainly be worth close to $100 billion.
The increase of Zuckerberg’s net worth this year is almost completely due to the stock price of Meta. It is up almost 5%, compared to a 2% improvement in the S&P 500. Meta has a market cap of $1.55 trillion, just ahead of Tesla’s number.
Facebook’s share value is up 63% in the past year, compared to 25% for the S&P 500. The primary reason is that several earnings statements show it remains the dominant social network company. Its underlying revenue, which comes primarily from advertising, has been strong. Facebook has about 18% of the world’s total digital ad revenue. The only platform ahead of it is Google at 39%.
More recently, Meta’s shares have been driven by the possible shutdown of TikTok, which competes directly with Meta’s Instagram. If TikTok’s 170 million users cannot use the platform, one of the likely places to go is Instagram.
TikTok was shut down recently for a brief time because of a bill approved by Congress, signed by President Biden and supported by the Supreme Court. Donald Trump has temporarily lifted this ban.
If TikTok closes, Zuckerberg should get richer.
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