After the stock plunge

The fortune of Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta Corp. on Thursday decreased by $11 billion after a significant drop in the company's shares on the back of the publication of its quarterly reports. This was reported by Forbes magazine on Friday night.

According to its data, Zuckerberg's fortune now stands at $36 billion. The entrepreneur has dropped from the 25th richest person in the world to 29th place. According to the magazine's assessment, the past year "was not the best" for Zuckerberg.

The fact is that Meta shares rose sharply during the pandemic and peaked in September 2021. That boosted Zuckerberg's fortune to $136.4 billion. Since then, the stock has fallen 74% in value, and the Facebook founder has lost about $100 billion.

As the British Financial Times wrote on Thursday, Meta lost 19% of its market capitalisation on the back of weak results for the third quarter of 2022. It also pointed out that a 52% year-on-year decline in net profit in the third quarter to $4.4 billion led to a "mass exodus" of investors from the company's shareholdings, which fell by more than $65 billion in a share dump on Wednesday.

The paper cites declining revenues from the digital advertising segment, as well as "market participants' scepticism about betting on the development of Meta and artificial intelligence technologies" as the main reasons for the decline in Meta's investment appeal. In addition, competition from the Chinese social network TikTok, and Apple's new policy of personal data collection, which complicates the targeting of advertising on iOS devices, are hurting the company's market position.

It's also worth noting that Mark Zuckerberg owns more than 350 million shares of Meta, according to a recent statement from the company. At one point, he was third in Bloomberg's wealth index, behind only Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. As of Wednesday's close, he was ranked 23rd.