Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks about the Facebook News feature on October 25, 2019 at the Paley Center For Media in New York.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth fell by $18 billion on Thursday after comments by the American newspaper The Guardian Meta The CEO sent his company’s stock price into its steepest decline since October 2022 during the earnings call.
Meta exceeded expectations on revenue and profit, but delivered a lighter-than-expected revenue forecast. Zuckerberg told investors that the company would continue to invest billions of dollars in areas such as artificial intelligence and the metaverse, even as Meta relies on advertising for 98% of its revenue.
“We have historically seen a lot of volatility in our stock during this phase of our product playbook, where we are investing in scaling a new product but not yet monetizing it,” Zuckerberg said on the call.
Zuckerberg owns about 345 million A and B shares. When the stock fell $52.12 on Thursday, the value of his stake fell by about $18 billion to $152 billion by the end of trading.
The 39-year-old programmer founded the company in his Harvard dorm room in 2004 and rebranded it from Facebook to Meta in 2021, signaling to investors that he planned to focus on the non-existent metaverse.
Meta’s Reality Labs division, which houses the hardware and software for developing the metaverse, has posted a cumulative loss of $45 billion since 2020, when the company first split the unit in its financials.
Meta said it plans to spend $35 billion to $40 billion in capital expenditures on Meta this year, up from its previous forecast.
Zuckerberg’s fortunes have gone up and down over the years as his company’s stock has been particularly volatile. His net worth dropped by about $100 billion in 2022. In early 2023, he announced that Meta would embark on a “year of efficiency,” a move that saw its stock price triple this year, boosting Zuckerberg’s net worth.
Thursday wasn’t the worst day for Zuckerberg’s bank account. He lost nearly $30 billion in a single day in early 2022, when his company’s stock price plummeted 26% due to weak earnings and disappointing expectations.
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