Facebook Acquires Whatsapp
So our asked Equilar, a firm that focuses on analyzing exec settlement and company data, to help us analyze all the Stocks as well as Exchange Compensation filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.
Facebook Acquires Whatsapp
It turns out he's marketed greater than 22 million shares worth roughly $2.8 billion since January.
Facebook accepted buy WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in stock, and also the cost had gone up to $22 billion by October, when the offer closed, thanks to Facebook's climbing supply price. Koum had concerning 45% of the company when he marketed it, Forbes estimates, which indicates his take on paper had to do with $10 billion. He additionally 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 common stock. He additionally had another 19 million restricted stock units, which vest with time and act as a reward for him to stick around till November 2018.
Based on that vesting timetable, it looks like he's gained about 3 numerous those RSUs up until now this year.
So in general, he's sold concerning one-third of his current stake in Facebook this year.
Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp remains to grow rapidly and as the company is making changes to the solution that can open brand-new moneymaking chances, yet additionally runs the risk of alienating some customers.
On Thursday, Facebook introduced that WhatsApp was altering its privacy policy for the very first time since the acquisition to allow Facebook to see the telephone number that an individual shares when they enroll in WhatsApp. Facebook can utilize this info to enable organisations to contact individuals straight via WhatsApp, as they can currently do with Carrier, as well as will enable Facebook to show even more appropriate ads to logged-in users. However, WhatsApp claimed it would certainly not share these contact number directly with individuals.
WhatsApp passed greater than than 1 billion regular monthly individuals in February and is the most preferred chat app in majority of the world, according to recent statistics from SimilarWeb.
Facebook had no talk about the sales, as it doesn't discuss peoples' financial investment choices.