Facebook Buys Whatsapp for 19 Billion
So our asked Equilar, a company that specializes in examining exec settlement and company data, to help us examine all the Stocks as well as Exchange Commission filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.
Facebook Buys Whatsapp For 19 Billion
It ends up he's sold more than 22 million shares worth roughly $2.8 billion because January.
Facebook consented to buy WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in supply, and the rate had increased to $22 billion by October, when the offer closed, thanks to Facebook's climbing supply cost. Koum owned concerning 45% of the company when he sold it, Forbes estimates, which implies 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 yearly proxy declaring, Koum possessed over 60 million shares of common stock. He additionally had another 19 million limited supply units, which vest gradually and work as a reward for him to linger till November 2018.
Based on that vesting timetable, it appears like he's made regarding 3 countless those RSUs until now this year.
So in general, he's sold concerning one-third of his existing stake in Facebook this year.
Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp continues to proliferate and also as the company is making changes to the solution that could open new moneymaking chances, however also risks estranging some users.
On Thursday, Facebook introduced that WhatsApp was transforming its privacy policy for the very first time since the procurement to allow Facebook to see the contact number that a user shares when they sign up for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this information to permit companies to speak to individuals straight through WhatsApp, as they can currently do with Messenger, as well as will certainly permit Facebook to show even more appropriate advertisements to logged-in individuals. Nonetheless, WhatsApp stated it would not share these phone numbers straight with individuals.
WhatsApp passed more than than 1 billion monthly individuals in February as well as is the most preferred chat application in more than half of the world, according to recent statistics from SimilarWeb.
Facebook had no discuss the sales, as it does not talk about peoples' financial investment choices.