Exactly five years have passed since Facebook had its glitch-riddled debut on the Nasdaq.
Each year since then, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has added an average $9 billion to his net worth, building his wealth up to $62.3 billion today. Based on the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, 33-year-old Zuckerberg is the fifth-wealthiest person in the world — largely thanks to the appreciation of his Facebook stock holdings.
At the social media company’s debut half a decade ago though, it would’ve been easy to doubt Zuckerberg’s ability to rank in the world’s 10 wealthiest. Four days after the CEO turned 28, Facebook much-hyped about IPO finally hit markets — as a dud. Thanks to technical glitches, Facebook didn’t begin trading until 11:30 a.m. that Friday, priced at $42.05 a share. But by the end of the day, it had dropped as low as $38 as investor confidence began to wane.
In that single trading day, Zuckerberg’s stake in the company had fallen from $19 billion when the stock began trading, to $17 billion at the market’s close. And the losses didn’t stop there. After the company reported a weaker than expected quarter following its first ever earnings call as a publicly-traded company in July, the CEO’s worth had fallen to $11.9 billion.
But Facebook has certainly proved its doubters wrong since. Under Zuckerberg’s leadership, shares of the company have risen some 282% since its IPO.
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