Mark Zuckerberg is soon to be world’s richest man after Facebook shares hit record high

THE hoodie-wearing Facebook founder is closer than ever to becoming the world’s richest man, as Facebook is now worth more than Coca-Cola.

MARK Zuckerberg has just added more moolah to his enormous stash of cash.

Or sort of cash. Facebook stock has jumped to record highs after the social network reported strong earnings results.

The shares closed up 5.2 per cent on Thursday at $A79.59, well above the record of $76.45 on March 10. The rise lifted Facebook’s market value to some $205.57 billion. After 10 years in operation, Facebook is now worth more than Coca-Cola, a company that has been around since 1886.

What this means is Zuckerberg, with his more than 400 million shares, now has a personal fortune worth over $31 billion, according to Business Insider.

But while his worth is climbing and climbing, he’s still quite off from knocking Carlos Slim off the perch, whose $85.34 billion is just ahead of Bill Gates’ $84.81 billion.

Zuckerberg’s salary at Facebook is under a million dollars so his fortune rises and falls with Facebook’s value. Last year, he cashed out some shares in exchange for $3.5 billion.

Facebook’s share price has been on a rollercoaster since its initial public offering two years ago, It opened at $40.33 per share but plummeted to under $20 within the year.

Facebook said on Wednesday its profits leapt to $839.60 million during the three months ended June 30, a 138 per cent increase from a year earlier.

Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune is tied to Facebook’s value.

Revenue in the quarter surged to $3.08 billion, with approximately 62 per cent of that money coming from ads served up on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablet computers.

Ad revenues overall were up 67 per cent from a year ago to $2.84 billion.

The number of people who visited the online social network at least once a month climbed to 1.32 billion in a 14 per cent rise from the same quarter last year, according to Facebook. The number of active users on mobile devices rose to 1.07 billion.

“It was a very impressive quarter on top of what we believe were very high (Wall) Street expectations,” said Paul Vogel, analyst at Barclays.

Originally published as Mark Zuckerberg is soon to be world’s richest man after Facebook shares hit record high