The verdict from Wall Street is in — and investors clearly think Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was the winner after ten hours of testimony in Congress Tuesday and Wednesday.
Although shares of Facebook dipped Thursday morning, they are still up nearly 3% since Zuckerberg entered Capitol Hill to face questions from the Senate Tuesday.
The stock was already rallying earlier Tuesday as investors digested the previously released prepared remarks from Zuckerberg.
All told, Facebook’s stock has gained about 4.5% since the start of trading Tuesday morning.
So Zuckerberg, who owns more than 401.4 million shares in Facebook, got nearly $3 billion richer in the past few days. His stake in the company is now worth around $66 billion.
That makes up nearly all of Zuckerberg’s total net worth — good enough to make him the seventh richest person in the world, according to real-time data tracked by Forbes.
Of course, anybody else who owns Facebook shares have benefited as well. The company’s total market value has increased by nearly $23 billion since Tuesday morning.
The stock is still down about 7% this year though, making Facebook the worst perfomer among big tech stocks.
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. — the parent of Snapchat — are up more than 8% in the past few days. Twitter has gained 5%. Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, is up 1% while LinkedIn owner Microsoft has risen 2%.
