Did Facebook Buy Whatsapp

Did Facebook Buy Whatsapp - WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum, that sold his company to Facebook in 2014, has been unloading Facebook stock at a constant clip under a prescheduled trading strategy, with brand-new sales a number of times a month, because February 2016.

Facebook Buys Whatsapp

So our asked Equilar, a company that specializes in evaluating executive settlement as well as company data, to help us analyze all the Securities as well as Exchange Compensation filings related to Koum's sales for 2016.

Did Facebook Buy Whatsapp


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

Facebook consented to get WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in stock, as well as the price had actually increased to $22 billion by October, when the offer closed, thanks to Facebook's climbing stock price. Koum owned concerning 45% of the business when he marketed it, Forbes estimates, which indicates his take on paper was about $10 billion. He also 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 common stock. He additionally had one more 19 million restricted supply systems, which vest in time and function as an incentive for him to stick around until November 2018.

Based upon that vesting routine, it appears like he's made concerning 3 numerous those RSUs up until now this year.

So overall, he's marketed regarding one-third of his current risk in Facebook this year.

Koum's supply sales come as WhatsApp continues to proliferate and as the company is making changes to the solution that can open up brand-new moneymaking chances, yet additionally runs the risk of pushing away some users.

On Thursday, Facebook announced that WhatsApp was transforming its privacy plan for the very first time considering that the acquisition to enable Facebook to see the contact number that an individual shares when they sign up for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this info to allow services to speak to users directly via WhatsApp, as they can already do through Messenger, and will enable Facebook to show more appropriate ads to logged-in customers. However, WhatsApp said it would not share these contact number straight with users.

WhatsApp passed greater than than 1 billion month-to-month users in February and also is one of the most prominent chat app in over half of the globe, according to current stats from SimilarWeb.

Facebook had no comment on the sales, as it doesn't discuss peoples' investment choices.