If you listen to Wall Street, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the winner when it comes to his ten hours of testimony in Congress Tuesday and Wednesday.
There was a slight dip in shares of Facebook (FB) on Thursday morning. Despite this, they are still up 3% since Zuck took entered Capitol Hill to answer questions from Senators on Tuesday.
While investors were taking in the previously prepared remarks Zuckerberg made on Tuesday the stock was already rising.
Since the Facebook co-founder and CEO owns over 401.4 million shares of Facebook, his net worth increased by over $3 billion in the past few days. His company stake it up to $66 billion.
This accounts for almost all of his personal total net worth. According to real-time data tracked by Forbes, this makes him the seventh richest person in the world.
Then there are the Facebook shareholders who benefited as well. The total market value of the company has increased by almost $23 billion since Tuesday morning.
Year-to-date, the company's stock is down 7%. This makes Facebook the worst performer of big tech stocks in 2018.
Per CNN:
Shares are down 16% from the all-time high that they hit before the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which Facebook now says has affected 87 million users, first came to light.
The worst may be over though.
The general sense from Wall Street analysts is that Facebook might face some calls for more regulation but few seem to think that Facebook and other social media companies will wind up getting hit with crippling new rules that could hurt profits.
Analysts are also betting that there won't be much in the way of a user or advertiser fallout for Facebook either.
Investors in other social media stocks are enjoying a bump too.
Shares of Snap Inc (SNAP). -- the parent of Snapchat -- are up more than 8% in the past few days. Twitte (TWTR)r has gained 5%. Alphabet (GOOGL), the parent company of Google and YouTube, is up 1% while LinkedIn owner Microsoft (MSFT) has risen 2%.
So the questioning really hasn't been a bad thing for the social media mogul. Anytime you can increase your net worth by over $3 billion in a little over 24 hours, that's not a bad day's work. Even if it is spent being grilled on Capitol Hill.
Zuckerberg made 3 billion while he sat for Congress pic.twitter.com/jGEFFI6IyM
— Muckmaker (@RealMuckmaker) April 12, 2018
Leaves Hearing $3 Billion Richer! https://t.co/20g8Cnoekd
— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) April 11, 2018
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