Zuckerberg’s fortune reaches historic high with Facebook’s soaring shares

Zuckerberg’s fortune reaches historic high with Facebook’s soaring shares. Mark Zuckerberg has never been richer than he is right now. And that’s not only good news for you.

By Megan Sauer

Mark Zuckerberg has ranked among the wealthiest individuals globally for the past ten years. But he has never been as rich as he is right now.

Shares of Facebook (I still refuse to call the company “Meta”) are soaring after a strong earnings report. Before its earnings release, a single Facebook share would have cost $395.

As I write this article, a single share costs $477. Mark owns about 350 million shares, about 13% of the company.

Therefore, as I write this article, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth is $170 billion.

That’s an all-time high for the 39-year-old. It’s also a remarkable turnaround for Zuck, whose net worth fell to $35 billion at the end of 2022 as tech stocks were hit by inflation and rising interest rates.

That’s not the only good news for Mark. Yesterday, Facebook also announced that next month it will begin paying a quarterly dividend of 50 cents per share. As the owner of a total of 350 million shares, Mark will receive a quarterly dividend payment of $175 million starting next month, for a total annual payout of $700 million.

If Mark decided to move from California to a state with no income taxes like Texas or Florida, he would save $90 million a year in taxes. Mark is most likely to move to Hawaii, where he owns a secluded 1,400-acre estate. Unfortunately for Mark, in Hawaii, he would still pay a tax rate of 11%, which is only slightly better than California’s 13%.

Let’s take the example of Larry Ellison as a comparison. Larry Ellison receives about $1.6 BILLION a year in dividends from Oracle. In mid-2021, Larry changed his permanent residence to Florida. By doing so, Larry saves $230 million each year that would otherwise go to the state of California.

And in fact, the good news for Mark isn’t over yet! Thanks to a recent decision by a Delaware judge involving Elon Musk, one could argue that Mark just reached a new all-time high position on our list of the world’s richest people…

Elon’s Loss/Mark’s Gain

You may have heard the news about how a judge in Delaware just voided $56 billion of Elon Musk’s net worth.

In case you missed it, in summary: In 2018, Tesla’s board of directors awarded Elon Musk a compensation package that would give him an additional 12% stake if the company grew its $50 billion market capitalization (its level at the time) to $650 billion (which seemed like an extremely ambitious, almost fictitious goal).

Against all rationality, Elon and Tesla achieved it in just two years. So the company granted him options, which today are worth about $56 billion. Unfortunately, one shareholder felt this compensation package was excessive and filed a lawsuit in a Delaware court (where the company is headquartered).

And the judge ruled in favor of the shareholder! Elon can appeal, but it seems very likely that he will be forced to renegotiate much lower compensation for work performed between 2018 and 2023.

One could argue that wealth trackers should subtract $56 billion from Elon’s net worth right now. If we did that, Elon would go from $204 billion to $148 billion.

By that calculation, here’s how the richest people in the world would be ranked:

#1: Jeff Bezos: $190 billion
#2: Bernard Arnault: $182 billion
#3: Mark Zuckerberg: $170 billion
#4: Elon Musk: $148 billion
#5: Bill Gates: $145 billion
#6: Steve Ballmer: $140 billion
#7: Larry Ellison: $129 billion
#8: Warren Buffett: $128 billion
#9: Larry Page: $127 billion
#10: Sergey Brin: $120 billion