Mark Zuckerberg's Wealth Plunge: What Happened And What It Means

Last week at this time, Mark Zuckerberg was safely one of the five richest people on the planet with a net worth of $122 billion. At that point, the only human beings richer than Zuckerberg were Bill Gates, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. Unfortunately, a lot has happened in the last week… and none of it has been good news for Facebook or Zuck.

Disastrous Earnings Report and Its Consequences

Last Wednesday, Facebook released a disastrous quarterly earnings report. The company missed on all of its major financial metrics and issued negative forward-looking guidance that admitted to significant competition coming from TikTok and a body blow coming from Apple's war against app tracking. This report has shaken investor confidence and raised concerns about Facebook's future.

In the immediate wake of the earnings report, Facebook's stock price fell off a cliff. By the end of the trading day Thursday, Facebook saw its stock price drop a little over 26%. This is the company’s biggest one-day stock price drop ever, slicing $230 billion from Facebook's market cap. Such a significant loss raises questions about the company's stability and growth potential.

Impact on Mark Zuckerberg’s Net Worth

As the owner of roughly 13% of the company’s outstanding shares, this kind of bloodbath obviously has a massive impact on Mark's net worth. As I type this article (on Monday February 7 at 1:20 PM PST), Mark's net worth is teetering on $80 billion and leaning towards $79 billion. This marks a staggering $42 billion drop within a week, a significant event considering it’s the first time Mark has been worth less than $100 billion since August 2020.

Just a few months ago, Facebook was on top of the world. In September 2021, Facebook's market cap hit an all-time high of $1.07 trillion, making Mark the FOURTH richest person globally. However, at $80 billion, Mark is now ranked at #12 among the world's richest individuals, having lost $60 billion in wealth in just a few months.

Facing Real Competition and Regulatory Challenges

Mark and Facebook seem to have been facing non-stop existential PR disasters from the moment the company went public nearly a decade ago. However, this time feels different. For the first time ever, they’re facing real competition from major rivals while also being investigated for anti-trust violations.

Full disclosure – I own 36 shares of Facebook in my stock portfolio. Those shares lost a little over $3,000 in value on Thursday. While not the biggest tragedy in the world, it certainly adds to the concern regarding Facebook's future trajectory.

Facebook's Algorithm Changes and Their Impact

On the other hand, I take a bit of pleasure in watching Facebook stumble. Over the past 6-7 years, CelebrityNetWorth's Facebook reach has been cut off by mindless and unexplained Facebook algorithm changes. With around 500,000 Facebook fans, on a good day, our articles reach only 30,000 of those fans, which is just 6%.

When I started investing in our Facebook page back in 2015, our average post reached at least 25% of our fans. I invested hundreds of thousands of dollars building the fan page only to see our reach slowly dwindle to its current state. If I had known that our reach would drop to 6% in 8 years, I would have chosen to invest that money elsewhere.

Shocking Decline in Facebook Traffic

Here are some real numbers: In January 2021, the posts we published to our Facebook page resulted in a little over 2 million visitors coming to CelebrityNetWorth from Facebook, which was our biggest traffic month ever. However, in January 2022, Facebook sent just 300,000 visits to CelebrityNetWorth. That's an 85% drop with nothing changed on our end, just Facebook being Facebook.

So yeah, I think Mark and his employees can find a way to swallow this recent plunge. The landscape is shifting, and it will be interesting to see how Facebook adapts to these challenges in the coming months.