Facebook was launched 20 years ago. The parent company Meta is worth a trillion dollars on the stock market. An investment in the IPO in 2012 would have been really worth it – even if it didn’t seem like it at first.
It all started 20 years ago today in the dormitory of a 19-year-old student who wanted to exchange ideas with his fellow students online. Just a few years later, Facebook is a gigantic network and Mark Zuckerberg is one of the richest people on the planet.
In May 2012, Facebook went public. Zuckerberg was suddenly around $19 billion richer. The shares closed at $38.23. Anyone who had invested money in Facebook back then and left the securities in their portfolio would be happy with hefty profits today.
Things didn’t look good for the stock at the beginning. It languished for a long time even below the issue price of $38 and only started to rise sharply in the summer of 2013. In September 2021, it reached a record high of $384. Only a little later, the group – which now also included Instagram and WhatsApp – was renamed Meta.
The sudden crash followed in February 2022 – the shares bottomed out at around $88 in November. But then things went up again quickly. The current rate is $405. The company is valued at more than a trillion dollars on the stock market.
Anyone who had bought shares for $5,000 on the day of the IPO and kept them would now be significantly richer. For this sum there were almost 131 Facebook shares – based on the closing price. A package like this is currently worth just under $53,000. A Facebook share currently costs just under $475 – meaning it has gained 1,142 percent since the first day of trading. To put it into perspective: the German leading index DAX rose by around 170 percent during this period, and gold by around 28 percent.