Facebook Buys Whatsapp
So our asked Equilar, a firm that concentrates on examining executive payment as well as corporate information, to assist us analyze all the Stocks and also Exchange Payment filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.
Facebook Buys Whatsapp
It turns out he's sold more than 22 million shares worth about $2.8 billion given that January.
Facebook accepted buy WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in stock, and the cost had actually increased to $22 billion by October, when the offer closed, thanks to Facebook's rising supply rate. Koum owned regarding 45% of the business when he offered it, Forbes approximates, which means 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 possessed over 60 million shares of ordinary shares. He also had an additional 19 million limited stock units, which vest with time as well as function as a reward for him to remain till November 2018.
Based upon that vesting timetable, it resembles he's earned concerning 3 million of those RSUs up until now this year.
So on the whole, he's sold about one-third of his current stake in Facebook this year.
Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp continues to grow rapidly and also as the company is making changes to the solution that might open brand-new moneymaking opportunities, but additionally takes the chance of alienating some customers.
On Thursday, Facebook introduced that WhatsApp was changing its privacy plan for the very first time because the procurement to enable Facebook to see the contact number that a customer shares when they sign up for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this information to permit organisations to contact individuals straight through WhatsApp, as they can already do via Carrier, and will certainly enable Facebook to show even more relevant advertisements to logged-in individuals. However, WhatsApp stated it would not share these contact number straight with individuals.
WhatsApp passed greater than than 1 billion monthly individuals in February and also is the most prominent chat app in majority of the globe, according to recent statistics from SimilarWeb.
Facebook had no discuss the sales, as it does not talk about peoples' financial investment decisions.