Is Whatsapp sold to Facebook

Is Whatsapp Sold To Facebook - WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum, that offered his business to Facebook in 2014, has been unloading Facebook stock at a steady clip under a prescheduled trading plan, with brand-new sales several times a month, since February 2016.

Facebook Buys Whatsapp

So our asked Equilar, a business that concentrates on examining executive payment and also corporate data, to assist us examine all the Stocks and Exchange Compensation filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.

Is Whatsapp Sold To Facebook


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

Facebook accepted acquire WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in supply, and also the rate had actually risen to $22 billion by October, when the deal shut, thanks to Facebook's climbing stock rate. Koum owned regarding 45% of the firm when he sold it, Forbes approximates, which indicates his take on paper was about $10 billion. He additionally obtained a seat on Facebook's board.

At the end of 2015, according to Facebook's annual proxy declaring, Koum owned over 60 million shares of common stock. He likewise had another 19 million restricted supply devices, which vest over time as well as function as a motivation for him to stick around till November 2018.

Based on that vesting routine, it resembles he's made concerning 3 million of those RSUs until now this year.

So overall, he's offered concerning one-third of his current risk in Facebook this year.

Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp remains to grow rapidly and also as the business is making changes to the service that could open up brand-new moneymaking opportunities, yet likewise runs the risk of estranging some customers.

On Thursday, Facebook introduced that WhatsApp was altering its personal privacy plan for the very first time since the acquisition to enable Facebook to see the phone number that a user shares when they sign up for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this info to enable businesses to get in touch with customers directly with WhatsApp, as they can already do through Carrier, and will certainly enable Facebook to reveal more pertinent advertisements to logged-in users. Nonetheless, WhatsApp said it would not share these phone numbers directly with individuals.

WhatsApp passed more than than 1 billion regular monthly individuals in February as well as is one of the most preferred chat application in more than half of the world, according to current stats from SimilarWeb.

Facebook had no discuss the sales, as it doesn't talk about peoples' financial investment decisions.