CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assets disappeared $24 billion in an instant due to a plunge in stock prices stemming from poor Facebook performance.
Bloomberg reported on the 2nd (local time) that after Facebook’s parent company Meta announced its fourth-quarter earnings last year, stock prices fell more than 20% in overtime transactions and the value of Zuckerberg’s stake evaporated by $24 billion.
According to Bloomberg News’ billionaire index, Zuckerberg’s assets were $121 billion based on the closing price, but shrank to 97 billion as stock prices plunged in overtime transactions.
Meta closed at $323, up 1.25% on the same day, but fell vertically in overtime trading after its earnings announcement.
Meta’s net profit fell 8% in the fourth quarter of last year compared to the same period last year, and sales estimates for the first quarter of this year also fell below Wall Street analysts’ forecasts.
As of 7:40 p.m. in eastern U.S. time, Meta shares fell 23.19% to $248.10 in overtime trading.
Bloomberg predicted that Zuckerberg could be eliminated from the world’s top 10 richest people list for the first time since July 2015, assuming that the meta-slope continues during regular trading hours in the NASDAQ market.
The disappearance of tens of trillion won in assets due to the plunge in stock prices is comparable to the case of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Tesla’s stock price plunged in November last year when Musk posted an unexpected tweet asking whether he would sell 10% of his stake, and his assets also fell by $35 billion in a day.