Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META), is among America’s new high-tech elite. He has been to see President Trump and had a prominent seat at the inauguration. As has been true with many tech leaders, the futures of his company and its stock price have improved. Zuckerberg has done particularly well. His net worth has risen by $21.5 billion to $229 billion. That puts him behind only Elon Musk ($434 billion) and Jeff Bezos ($254 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. (In fact, eight of the top 10 people on this list are technology industry leaders.)
Zuckerberg founded Facebook, which is Meta’s largest and oldest product, in 2004 while an undergraduate at Harvard. In the most recent quarter, Meta’s revenue rose 19% to $40.6 billion. Net income rose 35% to $15.7 billion. Facebook and Meta’s smaller properties–Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger–have over 3 million users worldwide. Zuckerberg owns 13% of Meta but controls it via a special class of shares.
The increase of Zuckerberg’s net worth this year is almost completely due to the stock price of Meta. It is up almost 3%, about the same as the S&P 500. Meta has a market cap of $1.63 trillion, just ahead of Tesla’s $1.31 billion.
Facebook’s share value is up 63% in the past year, compared to 25% for the S&P 500. 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 Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google at 39%.
More recently, Meta’s shares have been partially driven by the possible shutdown of TikTok, which competes directly with Meta’s Instagram. If TikTok’s 170 million users cannot use the platform in the United States, one of the likely places for them 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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