Facebook shares fell by over 20% after it became known that the network revenues and the increase in the number of its users did not meet the investors’ expectations, BBC reports.
Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth fell by 16.8 billion dollars.
If this fall continues, Zuckerberg may lose the third place in the world's richest people ranking according to the agency's version, dropping to the sixth position. In early July, his net worth was estimated at 81.6 billion dollars, but now – less than 70 billion dollars.
The company was informed that in late June it had 2.23 billion active users. Such increase by 11% since June 2017 was the slowest in the last two years.
Facebook warned investors that in 2019, the company's expenses could exceed revenues.
Zuckerberg also added that they expect a slowdown in revenues due to the new network options for users, by which it will be possible to reduce ads, as well as due to the decrease in profitable markets growth in the world.
In addition, Facebook plans to increase costs for improving the network content monitoring, search for advertisers and the user data handling procedure.
It is noted that since the beginning of the year the company's shares have fallen "only" by 12% a few hours after New York auctions; however, the decline accelerated after the announcement of social network plans regarding the expenses.
