From 3rd richest to 23rd! Mark Zuckerberg has lost 61% of his wealth this year

Mark Zuckerberg is growing poorer by the day — by his billionaire standards. The Meta CEO has seen his fortune narrowing this year, with company stock in a free fall. Zuckerberg has lost $76.6 billion (or 61 per cent of his wealth) since the start of 2022, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This includes a $2.7 billion single-day erosion of wealth after Meta reported weak Q3 2022 earnings. 

Zuckerberg is now the world’s 23rd richest person with a net worth of $48.9 billion — down from a peak of $102 billion (when he was the third richest) in August 2020. Meta stock tanked 19 per cent in after-hours trading to $105.20 on Wednesday, after it reported a 52 per cent decline in profits at $4.4 billion in Q3 2022. This is its second consecutive quarterly dip in bottomline. 

The Facebook parent also saw a 4 per cent drop in revenues to $27.7 billion in the September quarter. For the ongoing quarter (Q4 2022), its revenue forecast stands at $30-$32.5 billion, lower than that a year ago.  

In the earnings call on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “We’re still behind where I think we should be, but we believe that we will return to healthier revenue growth trends next year. While we continue to navigate some challenging dynamics — a volatile macroeconomy, increasing competition, ads signal loss, and growing costs from our long-term investments — I have to say that our product trends look better from what I see than some of the commentary I’ve seen suggests.”

The 38-year-old Facebook boss has been criticised by investors and shareholders alike for his ambitious yet inexplicable bet on the Metaverse that has sent Meta’s capex soaring, while putting pressures on its core businesses and alienating employees. “Meta has drifted into the land of excess — too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency. This lack of focus and fitness is obscured when growth is easy but deadly when growth slows and technology changes,” Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital (Meta shareholder), wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg earlier this week. 

Meta Reality Labs, which houses the company’s metaverse and AR/VR efforts, had an operating loss of $3.67 billion in Q3 2022 on revenues of just $285 million. Zuckerberg has spent $10 billion on his “future vision for Metaverse”. 

The CEO defended his Metaverse vision saying, “I get that a lot of people might disagree with this investment. But from what I can tell, I think that this is going to be a very important thing, and I think it would be a mistake for us to not focus on any of these areas, which I think are going to be fundamentally important to the future. So, we're going to try to do this in a way that is responsible and matches the way that the rest of the business is growing over time.”

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