Did Facebook Buy Whatsapp
So our asked Equilar, a company that concentrates on assessing exec settlement and also corporate data, to help us analyze all the Securities and also Exchange Payment filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.
Did Facebook Buy Whatsapp
It ends up he's marketed more than 22 million shares worth roughly $2.8 billion considering that January.
Facebook agreed to purchase WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in supply, as well as the cost had actually increased to $22 billion by October, when the bargain shut, thanks to Facebook's climbing stock rate. Koum had about 45% of the firm when he offered it, Forbes estimates, which indicates his take on paper had to do with $10 billion. He also obtained a seat on Facebook's board.
At the end of 2015, according to Facebook's annual proxy filing, Koum possessed over 60 million shares of common stock. He likewise had an additional 19 million restricted supply units, which vest gradually and work as an incentive for him to linger up until November 2018.
Based upon that vesting timetable, it resembles he's made concerning 3 numerous those RSUs thus far this year.
So in general, he's offered regarding one-third of his present stake in Facebook this year.
Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp continues to proliferate and as the business is making changes to the service that can open new moneymaking possibilities, but additionally risks alienating some customers.
On Thursday, Facebook announced that WhatsApp was altering its privacy plan for the very first time since the purchase to enable Facebook to see the telephone number that a user shares when they register for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this information to enable businesses to speak to customers straight via WhatsApp, as they can already do via Carrier, as well as will certainly allow Facebook to show more appropriate advertisements to logged-in customers. Nevertheless, WhatsApp claimed it would certainly not share these telephone number straight with customers.
WhatsApp passed more than than 1 billion regular monthly individuals in February and is the most popular chat application in over half of the globe, according to current statistics from SimilarWeb.
Facebook had no comment on the sales, as it does not comment on peoples' financial investment choices.