Facebook Buys Whatsapp for 19 Billion

Facebook Buys Whatsapp For 19 Billion - WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum, that marketed his business to Facebook in 2014, has been unloading Facebook stock at a consistent clip under a prescheduled trading strategy, with brand-new sales numerous times a month, because February 2016.

Facebook Buys Whatsapp

So our asked Equilar, a business that concentrates on evaluating executive payment and also business data, to help us check out all the Securities and also Exchange Compensation filings related to Koum's sales for 2016.

Facebook Buys Whatsapp For 19 Billion


It ends up he's marketed more than 22 million shares worth roughly $2.8 billion considering that January.

Facebook accepted purchase WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in supply, as well as the price had risen to $22 billion by October, when the bargain shut, thanks to Facebook's increasing stock price. Koum owned regarding 45% of the business when he sold it, Forbes approximates, which indicates his take on paper had to do with $10 billion. He additionally got a seat on Facebook's board.

At the end of 2015, according to Facebook's yearly proxy declaring, Koum owned over 60 million shares of common stock. He likewise had one more 19 million limited stock units, which vest over time and function as an incentive for him to stick around until November 2018.

Based on that vesting timetable, it appears like he's gained regarding 3 million of those RSUs so far this year.

So generally, he's marketed regarding one-third of his present stake in Facebook this year.

Koum's supply sales come as WhatsApp continues to grow rapidly and as the firm is making changes to the solution that might open up new moneymaking chances, yet additionally takes the chance of estranging some users.

On Thursday, Facebook introduced that WhatsApp was altering its privacy plan for the very first time since the acquisition to permit Facebook to see the telephone number that a user shares when they register for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this details to enable services to speak to users directly through WhatsApp, as they can already do through Messenger, and also will certainly allow Facebook to show more pertinent advertisements to logged-in users. Nevertheless, WhatsApp said it would not share these phone numbers straight with individuals.

WhatsApp passed more than than 1 billion regular monthly individuals in February as well as is the most preferred conversation application in over half of the world, according to recent statistics from SimilarWeb.

Facebook had no talk about the sales, as it does not comment on peoples' investment choices.