In early April, Facebook’s (NASDAQ:FB) CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg agreed to pay over $1 billion for Instagram, a red-hot photo-sharing service. But it looked like the payday would be even higher because of the upcoming IPO (the transaction included $300 million in cash plus 23 million shares). Well, it turned out to be a bad bet — at least for now.

Because of the fall in Facebook’s stock price, the Instagram deal is now worth about $977 million. True, this is still a pretty hefty amount since the company only had 14 employees and zero revenues.

Interestingly enough, Instagram could have protected its purchase price with something called a collar. That is, Facebook would have to issue more shares if the stock price fell.

But hey, who thought Facebook’s IPO would be a disaster?