Whatsapp sold to Facebook
So our asked Equilar, a company that focuses on evaluating executive compensation as well as corporate data, to aid us check out all the Stocks and Exchange Commission filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.
Whatsapp Sold To Facebook
It ends up he's sold greater than 22 million shares worth approximately $2.8 billion given that January.
Facebook agreed to acquire WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in stock, and the price had gone up to $22 billion by October, when the deal shut, thanks to Facebook's climbing stock price. Koum owned concerning 45% of the company when he marketed it, Forbes estimates, which suggests 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 filing, Koum owned over 60 million shares of ordinary shares. He likewise had another 19 million limited supply systems, which vest with time and also work as an incentive for him to linger up until November 2018.
Based on that vesting routine, it appears like he's made regarding 3 countless those RSUs thus far this year.
So overall, he's offered concerning one-third of his current stake in Facebook this year.
Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp continues to proliferate and also as the business is making changes to the service that could open up brand-new moneymaking opportunities, but also runs the risk of alienating some customers.
On Thursday, Facebook introduced that WhatsApp was altering its personal privacy plan for the first time given that the purchase to enable Facebook to see the phone number that a user shares when they enroll in WhatsApp. Facebook can utilize this details to enable companies to get in touch with customers directly through WhatsApp, as they can already do via Carrier, and also will permit Facebook to show more relevant ads to logged-in users. However, WhatsApp said it would not share these telephone number straight with customers.
WhatsApp passed greater than than 1 billion monthly individuals in February as well as is one of the most popular conversation application in over half of the world, according to recent statistics from SimilarWeb.
Facebook had no comment on the sales, as it does not talk about peoples' investment choices.