Mark Zuckerberg's Net Worth Has Plunged Since Facebook Went Public

In May of 2012, Facebook finally listed their shares on the NASDAQ after years and years of anticipation.

Things started out really well for Facebook and their CEO and Chairman of the Board, Mark Zuckerberg. Shares of Facebook, which were priced at $38/share, gapped up and quickly ran to $45.

At the moment that Facebook hit $45, Mark Zuckerberg was worth roughly $22.5 billion. Zuckerberg sold 30.2 million shares of Facebook in the initial public offering, with most of this money going towards paying off taxes. After this sale, Zuckerberg still had 503,601,850 shares of Facebook, and his stake was worth around $22.5 billion.

As we all now know, Facebook tumbled after hitting $45 per share. After so much hype, the company was hit by a seemingly endless negative stream of news. The initial public offering had been majorly flubbed. The NASDAQ couldn't handle the volume of trades on Facebook's first day of a publicly traded company. Worries about Facebook's revenue growth suddenly surfaced. Worries about how the company would monetize its growing number of mobile users also surfaced at the same time.

Facebook, after hitting $45/share per share just a few months ago, is now trading at around $19.50 per share. Peter Thiel, one of the company's earliest investors, has sold the majority of his stake. Tens of billions of dollars in market capitalization has been obliterated, and people are not happy.

Mark Zuckerberg is surely not happy as well. Not only does the precipitous drop in shares of Facebook make it harder to attract and retain new talent, but it's also embarrassing. And, as if that wasn't enough, Zuckerberg has seen his personal net worth drop over $12 billion in just a couple of months.

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Having said all that, don't feel too bad for Zuckerberg. He is still worth a little less than $10 billion, which makes him one of the richest men in the world. Zuckerberg is worth nearly 128,000 times more than the median US household, so don't cry too many tears for the "Zuckdogg" tonight.

Source: Mark Zuckerberg Net Worth