He's back. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of social media giant Meta Platforms, is once again one of the planet's elite billionaires.
Zuckerberg has put 2022 in the rearview mirror, a year that saw him ejected from the top 20 of the biggest fortunes in the world, like a victim of the plague.
During last year, his fortune, which is linked to the stock market performance of Meta (META), of which he is one of the largest individual shareholders, had decreased by $71 billion compared to 2021.
This loss represented 57% of his fortune. Zuckerberg was then living a nightmare, fueled by investor rejection of his bet on the metaverse as the next big thing for the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Investors felt that betting the future of the social media empire on large numbers of consumers opting for a virtual world in their future interactions was foolish and too risky.
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How Zuckerberg Reconnected with Investors
Zuckerberg clung to this strategy for a long time, until he finally opened his eyes and agreed to focus on his group's core business, namely developing the services and products that social network users want and aspire to.
This change in strategy is paying off.
Zuckerberg started by announcing two big waves of job cuts. The first on Nov. 9 amounted to the elimination of 11,000 jobs, a first for Meta since its creation in 2004. The second wave involved the elimination of 10,000 jobs, an announcement made in March. In total, Meta decided to cut 21,000 jobs in about five months.
Zuckerberg also called 2023 the year of efficiency. This efficiency is paying off, as Meta's revenue rose 3% to $28.65 billion in the first quarter, the company announced on April 26. The net profit certainly fell by 24% to $5.71 billion, but it suffered from a large restructuring charge of $621 million. Spending will be contained this year, the Menlo-Park, Calif.-based company said, expecting a second-quarter revenue growth of between $29.5 billion and $32 billion.
"Even as our financial position improves, I continue to believe that slowing hiring, flattening our management structure, increasing the percent of our company that is technical, and more rigorously prioritizing projects will improve the speed and quality of our work," Zuckerberg told analysts during the company's earnings' call on April 26. "I also believe that a stronger financial position will enable us to weather a volatile environment while remaining focused on our longer term priorities."
Zuckerberg Earned $42.3 Billion this Year
He added that in May, Meta will carry out its third wave of layoffs and restructuring across its business groups.
"This has been a difficult process," Zuckerberg said. "But after this is done, I think we’re going to have a much more stable environment for employees. And then for the rest of the year, I expect us to focus on improving our distributed work model, delivering AI tools to improve productivity, and removing unnecessary processes across the company."
Investors cheered. Meta shares gained a cumulative 14.8% in the two trading sessions following the release of first quarter’s results. This translated into a jump of more than $10 billion for Zuckerberg's net worth on April 27, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Since the announcement of the first wave of job cuts on Nov. 9, Meta’s stock has gained 149.1%, which translates into a market value gain of more than $370 billion. The social media giant has thus regained its place in the top 10 largest companies in the world by market capitalization. In 2022, Meta had been ejected from this elite club dominated by Apple (AAPL). Meta is currently eighth with a market value of $616.5 billion, according to companiesmarketcap.com.
The higher Meta goes, the bigger Zuckerberg's net worth grows. This year, the fortune of the chief executive, who will celebrate his 39th birthday in a few days, is up by $42.3 billion to $88.0 billion as of April 28, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Only the French businessman Bernard Arnault has seen his fortune increase more strongly than Zuckerberg’s. Arnault, the CEO of luxury group LVMH, is the richest man in the world with a net worth valued at $206 billion as of April 28, up by $43.7 billion this year.
Zuckerberg is once again knocking on the door of the top 10. He is currently the 12th richest person in the world. Six billion dollars separate him from the 10th place occupied by Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Alphabet (GOOGL).
