Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk Lose a Staggering Amount of Money

The current Powerball jackpot of $1 billion may be an unimaginable number to most people, but it pales in comparison with the losses suffered this year by three of the world's richest billionaires.

A tough year for tech giants Meta  (META) - Get Free Report and Amazon  (AMZN) - Get Free Report has been magnified by a stunning week of disastrous earnings reports in the sector. And a wild ride for electric vehicle company Tesla  (TSLA) - Get Free Report has made for a discouraging first 10 months of 2022 for its shareholders as well.

Already dealing with a difficult year, shares of Facebook parent Meta have been trading in a challenging environment in part because of increasing skepticism about expectations for its role in the Metaverse.

Those suspicions as well as online advertising sluggishness and competition from TikTok led to a disappointing third-quarter earnings report Oct. 26 for Meta.

Its shares closed Oct. 27 at $97.94, which was the lowest closing price for the stock since 2016. It was down 24.6% for the day. 

Amazon stock dropped 7% on Oct. 28, the next day after it predicted holiday sales would be lower than current expectations.

During its Oct. 27 third-quarter earnings call, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky signaled difficulty ahead for the e-commerce behemoth.

"As the third quarter progressed, we saw moderating sales growth across many of our businesses, as well as the increased foreign currency headwinds," he said. "We expect these impacts to persist throughout the fourth quarter."

Tesla has had a rocky 2022 as anxiety about CEO Elon Musk's hyped and hectic deal to buy Twitter  (TWTR) - Get Free Report as well as concerns about both supply chain issues and a demand drop-off have spooked investors.

Three CEOs YTD Total Losses top $200 Billion

As third-quarter earnings frustrations resulted in more losses for Meta, Amazon and Tesla, net worths for their CEOs continued to dive for 2022 as a whole.

Zuckerberg's net worth was $142 billion in September 2021. It has slid downward consistently since then. After the disappointing earnings report on Oct. 26, 2022 his net worth dropped $11 billion in one day to settle at $37.7 billion on Oct. 27, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. For 2022 specifically, Zuckerberg's net worth is down $87.3 billion.

Bezos's $65.7 billion year-to-date loss puts his current net worth at $127 billion.

And Musk has lost $66.4 billion this year. He does remain the richest person in the world with a total net worth of $204 billion.

Combine the losses of these three CEOs and the math adds up to total 2022 losses so far of $219.4 billion. (For comparison's sake, if you won the $1 billion Powerball jackpot and took the cash payout, you'd be lucky to take home $0.4 billion after taxes.) Worry not, though, the three billionaires still have a combined net worth of nearly $370 billion.

Little Change in Size of Meta Expected in 2023

During Meta's earnings call on Oct. 26, Zuckerberg described some factors that leads him to believe his company will not be growing in size in the near term.

"In terms of our business, total revenue grew slightly this quarter on a constant currency basis," Zuckerberg said. "We are still behind where I think we should be, but we believe that we will return to healthier revenue growth trends next year. That said it’s not clear that the economy has stabilized yet. So we are planning our budget somewhat more conservatively."

"In 2023, we are going to focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas," he continued. "So that means that some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today."