Get ready to feel really bad about your yearly income.
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg just earned a whopping $3.4 billion (£2.5 billion) in just over an hour after the social network giant posted some impressive second-quarter earnings on Wednesday.
Yup, you read that right – £2.5 billion in just over an hour.
Ready to feel even worse? The increase in his earnings pushed the founder and CEO’s net worth to an estimated new high of $56.7 billion (£42.9 billion), theMirror reports.
But Zuckerberg’s still only the world’s fifth richest person, right behind founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who is estimated to be worth $64 billion.
So what caused his massive spike in wealth? Well, Facebook’s stock price spiked 6.5 per cent in after-hours trading to $131.40 at around 5pm yesterday, after the company announced that revenues and earnings had exceeded analysts’ expectations thanks to gains in mobile ad revenue, according to Forbes.
Facebook’s second quarter earnings included a rise in revenue of 59 per cent to $6.44 billion, which eclipsed the $6.02 billion that analysts predicted. Profits increased, too, rising to $2.1 billion – also exceeding analysts’ estimates.
Considering Zuckerberg only founded Facebook back in 2004, this is pretty damn impressive. The 32-year-old social media entrepreneur is the youngest of the world’s ten richest people, and his company has increased by 223 per cent since the it first went public – he probably doesn’t regret dropping out of Harvard for it.
But just like other billionaires who hold the majority of their wealth in one company’s stock, his fortune can rise or fall by billions of dollars in a matter of minutes, following quarterly reports or other major company news.
Jealous of his earnings? You have every right to be, but turns out he’s not just another rich guy looking to make as much money as possible.
In December last year, following the birth of his daughter, Zuckerberg announced he was giving away 99 per cent of his Facebook shares, with the aim of ‘advancing human potential and promoting equality’.
So for once, the world may just be a better place thanks to a guy with a lot of money.