It might be good to be the king, but it might be better to be Mark Zuckerberg.
The Facebook founder finds himself $1.6 billion richer today, raising his estimated net worth to a mere bag of shells, $33 billion of them.
He has now exceeded the riches of Google co-founder Larry Page, co-founder Sergey Brin and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos.
Not bad for a guy who's just 30 years old.
On the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg now ranks 16th, Brin and Page at 17th and 18th, and Bezos in at 20th. They all have a long way to go to match Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who tops the list at $84.7 billion. Gates, though, is 58 years old, so there's plenty of time for the pack to catch up with him.
Zuckerberg's one-day windfall resulted from the release of the company's second quarter financials that boasted a 61 percent increase in sales year-over-year to $2.91 billion, defeating an analysts' average estimate of $2.81 billion.
The company's aggressive introduction of new advertising programs in the past year has led to net income doubling to $791 million. Facebook now has a 5.8 percent share of digital ad revenue worldwide. The company's Standard & Poor's 500 Index rating has ballooned by 183 percent in the last year.
Zuckerberg's Facebook co-founders and ground floor execs are also sitting pretty. Dustin Moskovitz, who ideated with Zuckerberg back in the college years, is also 30 years old and worth over $6 billion. Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, 44, owns shares worth an estimated $740 million. She has already sold enough shares to be liquid to the tune of more than $550 million.
Breaking down the numbers provides a staggering overview of a modern American success story. A comparison of results from the first six months of 2013 against the same period in 2014 reveals -
Revenue, 2013 - $3.271 billion; 2014- $5.412 billion. Net Income, non-GAAP, 2013 - $800 million; 2014 - S1.976 billion. Operating Margin, non-GAAP, 2013 - 41 percent; 2014 - 57 percent.
These are numbers representing growth that most corporations would be happy with over a decade; Facebook did it in one year.
Facebook reported that free cash flow for the second quarter was $872 million, cash and marketable securities were $13.96 billion, capital expenditures were $469 million.
Facebook was founded in 2004.
