Facebook Buys Whatsapp

Facebook Buys Whatsapp - WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum, who marketed his business to Facebook in 2014, has been unloading Facebook supply at a stable clip under a prescheduled trading plan, with new sales numerous times a month, since February 2016.

Facebook Buys Whatsapp

So our asked Equilar, a company that concentrates on examining exec compensation and business data, to aid us check out all the Securities and Exchange Payment filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.

Facebook Buys Whatsapp


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 supply, as well as the rate had risen to $22 billion by October, when the offer shut, thanks to Facebook's climbing stock rate. Koum had regarding 45% of the firm when he sold it, Forbes approximates, which indicates his take on paper had to do with $10 billion. He also obtained 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 also had another 19 million restricted stock systems, which vest with time and serve as a reward for him to stay up until November 2018.

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

So on the whole, he's offered concerning 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 business is making changes to the solution that might open new moneymaking chances, but additionally runs the risk of alienating some users.

On Thursday, Facebook revealed that WhatsApp was changing its personal privacy policy for the very first time because the purchase to allow Facebook to see the phone number that an individual shares when they register for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this info to permit businesses to contact customers directly with WhatsApp, as they can already do via Messenger, as well as will certainly allow Facebook to show even more pertinent ads to logged-in individuals. Nevertheless, WhatsApp claimed it would certainly not share these phone numbers straight with customers.

WhatsApp passed greater than than 1 billion monthly customers in February and also is the most popular chat app in over half of the globe, according to current statistics from SimilarWeb.

Facebook had no discuss the sales, as it does not comment on individuals' financial investment choices.