Facebook Acquires Whatsapp

Facebook Acquires Whatsapp - WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum, who sold his firm 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 focuses on assessing executive compensation and business data, to help us examine all the Stocks as well as Exchange Payment filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.

Facebook Acquires Whatsapp


It ends up he's sold more than 22 million shares worth about $2.8 billion because January.

Facebook consented to purchase 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 rising supply cost. Koum had about 45% of the business when he offered it, Forbes approximates, which means 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 declaring, Koum had over 60 million shares of ordinary shares. He additionally had another 19 million limited supply systems, which vest in time and also serve as a reward for him to stay till November 2018.

Based upon that vesting routine, it resembles he's earned about 3 million of those RSUs so far this year.

So in general, he's sold regarding one-third of his present stake in Facebook this year.

Koum's supply sales come as WhatsApp remains to proliferate and also as the business is making changes to the solution that can open brand-new moneymaking chances, however likewise risks alienating some users.

On Thursday, Facebook revealed that WhatsApp was changing its privacy policy for the first time because the purchase to enable Facebook to see the phone number that an individual shares when they sign up for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this info to permit companies to contact customers directly with WhatsApp, as they can currently do through Carrier, and also will allow Facebook to show even more pertinent ads to logged-in customers. Nevertheless, WhatsApp claimed it would certainly not share these telephone number directly with individuals.

WhatsApp passed more than than 1 billion regular monthly users in February and is the most preferred chat app in more than half of the globe, according to recent stats from SimilarWeb.

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