Zuckerberg Loses 37 Trillion Won Overnight... Surpasses Bill Gates to Become World's 4th Richest Person

Surpassing Bill Gates to Become the World's 4th Richest
Annual Income of 900 Billion Won from Dividends

The stock price of Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook (hereinafter Meta), surged sharply on the 2nd (local time), causing CEO Mark Zuckerberg's wealth to balloon like a snowball.

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On that day, Meta's stock closed at $474.99 (637,774 KRW), up 20.32% from the previous day on the New York Stock Exchange. This is an all-time high. The market capitalization also increased by $200 billion (267 trillion KRW) in one day, reaching $1.221 trillion.

The sharp rise in stock price was due to the earnings announced the previous day. After the earnings release, the stock price surged about 15% in after-hours trading, and it rose even more during the regular trading session that day. Meta's revenue for the last quarter increased by 25% compared to a year ago, and gross profit more than tripled compared to the same period last year.

In particular, Meta announced that it would pay dividends for the first time ever, showing confidence in future performance. The dividend was $0.50 per share. Among major companies, only Apple, Microsoft (MS), and Oracle pay dividends. Amazon and Google's parent company Alphabet do not pay dividends. Additionally, Meta announced a $50 billion share buyback plan, which also helped boost the stock price.

The sharp rise in stock price on that day also increased CEO Mark Zuckerberg's wealth. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg's net worth was $142 billion until the previous day. With the stock price rising more than 20% that day, his net worth increased by about $28 billion (37.478 trillion KRW) in one day, soaring to $170 billion.

As a result, he surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates (who had $144 billion the previous day) to become the world's fourth richest billionaire. Zuckerberg owns about 13% of Meta's shares, totaling 350 million shares. This means he can earn billions of won from dividends. If Meta pays a quarterly dividend of $0.50, Zuckerberg will receive $175 million per quarter, amounting to $700 million (936.9 billion KRW) annually.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.