Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has dropped to the 12th position on the list of the world’s richest people as his net worth was slashed by nearly $30bn on Thursday.
Facebook’s stock took a beating after a poor earnings report, which led to a historic selloff of the company’s shares in Thursday’s trading.
According to Forbes’ real-time calculations, Zuckerberg’s on-paper fortune was estimated to be $84.8bn, knocking him out of the top 10 among the world’s richest individuals. Forbes now has him at number 12.
Meta shares fell by more than 26 per cent on Thursday to close the day at $237.76 each — wiping off about $232bn in value, which was the largest one-day drop in the market value of any stock in US history, Dow Jones reported, citing its market data.
On Wednesday, the social media giant reported the first quarterly decline in its user base in company history.
Facebook reported 1.929 billion daily users in the fourth quarter, down from 1.93 billion users the previous quarter. The unprecedented decline in Facebook’s average daily users headlined a weaker-than-expected earnings report.
Zuckerberg blamed the downtick in user activity in part on increased competition from rival platforms such as TikTok.
“People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,” Zuckerberg said during an earnings call on Wednesday afternoon.
Zuckerberg told investors the company’s vision for a fully-realized metaverse is “still a ways off,” though he expressed optimism about its eventual impact on Meta’s business.
“I’m pleased with the momentum and the progress that we’ve made so far and I’m confident these are the right investments for us to focus on going forward,” Zuckerberg added.