initial public offerings (IPOs) trading on American exchanges

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Facebook (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell 70 million shares

Facebook (FB) stock fell Thursday after the company said in a regulatory filing that CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to sell more than 40 million shares as part of the company's first follow-on stock offering, which will total about $4 billion.


Facebook stock was down 2.4% in midday trading in the stock market today. The stock fell as much as 5.2% in heavy pre-market trading Thursday, according to the Nasdaq exchange.

Zuckerberg plans to buy 60 million Class B shares as part of a longstanding option, and 41.4 million of those shares will immediately convert to Class A shares and be sold, according to the filing.

At Thursday's midday price of 54.16, Zuckerberg would get about $2.24 billion, which the company he'll mostly use to pay taxes on the 60 million share option.

The action is part of a secondary stock offering in which the company will sell 27 million shares. Shareholders, including Zuckerberg, will sell about 43 million shares.

The follow-on offering is the company's first since its May 2012 initial public offering, which raised about $16 billion.

The new sale will knock Zuckerberg's holdings to 56.1% of the company's voting power, down from 58.8%, according to Facebook.

The approximately $1.46 billion that the company will raise in the offering will be used for general working capital, says Facebook.

No comments:

Post a Comment