The Facebook, Inc. Common Stock (NASDAQ: FB) share price closed up 4.2% yesterday (overnight Aussie time).
The social media giant finished the first trading day of the week at US$355.64 (AU$467.95) per share. That was enough to vault Facebook's market cap to US$1.01 trillion, joining a small handful of listed companies that have cracked the trillion-dollar mark.
At time of writing, the Facebook share price is up another 0.2% in afterhours trading to US$356.21.
Image source: Getty Images
Why did shares in Facebook leap higher yesterday?
Facebook's share price popped 4% higher in only 40 minutes yesterday afternoon (US time) after news broke that a judge had ruled in its favour and dismissed 2 major antitrust lawsuits.
In December 2020 the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) along with several US state attorneys general filed the suits against Facebook, saying the company was violating antitrust laws. The FTC was looking to force Facebook to divest some of its assets, such as the highly popular Instagram and WhatsApp programs.
In a win for Mark Zuckerberg's company, and the Facebook share price, the court ruled against the FTC. As Bloomberg reports, District Judge James Boasberg said there was not enough evidence presented to prove Facebook has more than a 60% monopoly share of the total social networking market.
That's not necessarily the end of the FTC's legal action against Facebook. The agency can refile its complaint within 30 days if it believes it can prove its antitrust allegations.
Facebook share price snapshot
Facebook shares are up 61% over the past 12 months. And since the 20 March 2020 pandemic-fuelled low, shares are up 138%. And remember, this is a US$1 trillion company we're talking about.
Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) became the first listed US company to surpass US$1 trillion almost 3 years ago. It's since been joined by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL), or Google to you and me.
With Facebook's share price lift yesterday, it now joins this trillion dollar club.
