File photo of Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.
A sharp rise in share price of social networking giant Facebook has helped the personal wealth of its 29-year-old CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg soar by a massive USD 15 billion in less than two years.
Zuckerberg 's fortune has soared to about USD 33 billion, from USD 18 billion on May 18, 2012 when the company went public. This has come on the back of investors showing huge interest in Facebook shares amid the company beginning to make money from its mobile platform.
Within two years of entering the stock market, the share value of Facebook has soared over 80 per cent to USD 68.46 apiece on February 28, up from USD 38 per share on its debut on Nasdaq stock exchange.
According to a latest regulatory filing, Zuckerberg holds 478,914,465 shares of Facebook, which accounted for 19.6 per cent of all outstanding shares.
At the debut price of USD 38 each, his holding of nearly 479 million shares was worth about USD 18 billion.
However, at the company's latest traded price of USD 68.46 apiece, this holding is now worth about USD 33 billion - which marks a surge of about USD 15 billion.
Facebook made a dismal stock market debut in May 2012 as investors dumped the stock amid concerns over growth prospects of the social networking firm.
However, Facebook bounced back smartly and the share price has gained ground especially in the wake of the company seeing a surge in its revenues from mobile advertising.
In order to sustain and strengthen its position in the social networking space, Facebook has adapted a business model as per the rapid increase in users' preference towards mobiles over desktop computers.
The networking giant, which celebrated its 10 years of existence last month, has more than 1.23 billion users across the world. On February 19, Facebook announced it is buying leading messaging app WhatsApp for USD 19 billion.
A rising share price has also helped Facebook's market capitalisation grow to over USD 150 billion currently, from about USD 104 billion at the time of listing.
The social networking firm's fourth quarter net profit jumped to USD 1.5 billion from USD 523 million a year earlier.
Besides, the company's revenues rose to USD 2.58 billion from USD 1.58 billion for the year.
Advertising revenue surged to USD 2.34 billion in the quarter and revenues from mobile segment contributed more than half of that figure.