Facebook Acquires Whatsapp
So our asked Equilar, a company that focuses on examining exec compensation and also company information, to help us check out all the Stocks and also Exchange Commission filings related to Koum's sales for 2016.
Facebook Acquires Whatsapp
It turns out he's sold greater than 22 million shares worth roughly $2.8 billion given that January.
Facebook agreed to purchase WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in supply, and also the rate had actually increased to $22 billion by October, when the offer closed, thanks to Facebook's rising stock cost. Koum had about 45% of the firm when he marketed it, Forbes estimates, which suggests his take on paper was about $10 billion. He likewise got a seat on Facebook's board.
At the end of 2015, according to Facebook's annual proxy filing, Koum had over 60 million shares of ordinary shares. He likewise had an additional 19 million restricted stock devices, which vest over time as well as serve as a reward for him to stick around till November 2018.
Based on that vesting schedule, it looks like he's made about 3 million of those RSUs up until now this year.
So in general, he's marketed regarding one-third of his current stake in Facebook this year.
Koum's supply sales come as WhatsApp continues to proliferate and also as the business is making changes to the service that might open up brand-new moneymaking possibilities, yet additionally runs the risk of alienating some users.
On Thursday, Facebook announced that WhatsApp was altering its personal privacy plan for the first time since the procurement to allow Facebook to see the contact number that a user shares when they enroll in WhatsApp. Facebook can utilize this details to allow businesses to call customers directly with WhatsApp, as they can already do via Messenger, and also will allow Facebook to show even more relevant ads to logged-in users. Nonetheless, WhatsApp stated it would not share these phone numbers directly with users.
WhatsApp passed more than than 1 billion monthly individuals in February and is the most preferred chat application in over half of the world, according to current statistics from SimilarWeb.
Facebook had no discuss the sales, as it doesn't comment on individuals' financial investment decisions.