Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is about to break his own record set last year as highest paid CEO — ever.
Zuckerberg in 2012 earned a whopping $2.3 billion, mostly in the form of dirt cheap stock options he exercised around the time of the social-media company’s initial public offering in May 2012.
This year, the 29-year-old CEO is on track to do even better — pulling in $3.3 billion, according to calculations by The Post.
“I think there’s very little doubt that he will be the highest-paid CEO again this year,” said Greg Ruel, senior research analyst for GMI Ratings, which did the study crowning Zuckerberg No. 1 last year.
The tech titan will break his own pay record by exercising 60 million stock options — out of the 120 million he was granted in 2005.
The other 60 million were exercised last year. All of the options cost the young CEO 6 cents a piece.
Facebook shares closed at $55.57 on Dec. 18, the day before Thursday’s options deal was disclosed in a regulatory filing.
That’ll give Zuckerberg a payday of around $3.33 billion.
At the time of last year’s option move, Facebook was trading at about $38 a share.
In addition to Zuckerberg’s options, Facebook announced plans to sell 27 million shares in a secondary offer; Zuckerberg will sell about 41 million A shares.
Still, Ruel says this may be Zuckerberg’s last big payday for a while as he has used up all 120 million of his uber cheap options.
After 2013, the Facebook founder won’t likely show up in the pay surveys again for a while, Ruel said.
Indeed, Zuckerberg’s regular pay — including salary, bonus and perks — is worth about $2 million year.
That’s a lot for regular folks, but not nearly enough to land him on the list of highest-paid CEOs.