Is Whatsapp sold to Facebook

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

So our asked Equilar, a firm that specializes in analyzing exec payment as well as corporate data, to assist us analyze all the Securities and Exchange Commission filings pertaining to Koum's sales for 2016.

Is Whatsapp Sold To Facebook

It turns out he's offered more than 22 million shares worth roughly $2.8 billion given that January.

Facebook agreed to buy WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in stock, and also the rate had actually risen to $22 billion by October, when the bargain shut, thanks to Facebook's rising stock price. Koum had concerning 45% of the company when he sold it, Forbes estimates, which indicates his take on paper was about $10 billion. He also obtained a seat on Facebook's board.

At the end of 2015, according to Facebook's annual proxy filing, Koum had over 60 million shares of ordinary shares. He additionally had an additional 19 million limited stock units, which vest in time and also act as a motivation for him to stick around up until November 2018.

Based on that vesting schedule, it appears like he's made regarding 3 numerous those RSUs so far this year.

So overall, he's sold about one-third of his existing risk in Facebook this year.

Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp remains to proliferate and also as the firm is making changes to the service that might open brand-new moneymaking opportunities, however also runs the risk of alienating some individuals.

On Thursday, Facebook revealed that WhatsApp was transforming its privacy policy for the first time because the acquisition to allow Facebook to see the contact number that an individual shares when they sign up for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this details to enable companies to call customers directly through WhatsApp, as they can currently do with Messenger, as well as will allow Facebook to reveal even more relevant advertisements to logged-in individuals. Nonetheless, WhatsApp said it would not share these phone numbers directly with users.

WhatsApp passed greater than than 1 billion monthly individuals in February and also is one of the most popular chat application in more than half of the world, according to recent stats from SimilarWeb.

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

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