Why Did Facebook Buy Whatsapp
So our asked Equilar, a company that concentrates on analyzing exec payment and also company data, to help us examine all the Stocks as well as Exchange Payment filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.
Why Did Facebook Buy Whatsapp
It turns out he's marketed more than 22 million shares worth roughly $2.8 billion given that January.
Facebook consented to buy WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in supply, and also the price had actually increased to $22 billion by October, when the deal shut, thanks to Facebook's increasing stock cost. Koum owned regarding 45% of the company when he offered it, Forbes estimates, which means his take on paper had to do with $10 billion. He likewise got a seat on Facebook's board.
At the end of 2015, according to Facebook's annual proxy declaring, Koum had over 60 million shares of ordinary shares. He likewise had one more 19 million limited stock units, which vest in time and also serve as a reward for him to stick around till November 2018.
Based on that vesting timetable, it looks like he's earned about 3 numerous those RSUs thus far this year.
So generally, he's marketed about one-third of his existing stake in Facebook this year.
Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp remains to proliferate and also as the business is making changes to the solution that could open up new moneymaking possibilities, but also risks alienating some individuals.
On Thursday, Facebook introduced that WhatsApp was transforming its personal privacy plan for the first time considering that the purchase to enable Facebook to see the telephone number that a customer shares when they register for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this information to permit businesses to contact users straight with WhatsApp, as they can currently do via Messenger, and will enable Facebook to reveal more appropriate advertisements to logged-in users. However, WhatsApp claimed it would not share these telephone number straight with individuals.
WhatsApp passed more than than 1 billion month-to-month users in February as well as is the most preferred conversation app in over half of the world, according to recent stats from SimilarWeb.
Facebook had no discuss the sales, as it does not talk about individuals' investment choices.