Facebook board member Marc Andreessen is padding his wallet ahead of the holiday shopping season.
Marc Andreessen Sold 73 Percent of His Facebook Stock in the Last Two Weeks
Andreessen sold more than $160 million of his Facebook stock.
Tyler Pina for Re/code
Andreessen, an early Facebook investor and board member since 2008, has sold over 1.5 million shares of Facebook stock in the past two weeks at a value of roughly $160 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Since Oct. 30, Andreessen has offloaded more than 73 percent of his total ownership in the company, and 90 percent of his class A shares (the shares that don’t carry any voting rights).
The sales occurred around the time Facebook reported its quarterly earnings on Nov. 4. The company beat analysts’ estimates and hit a new milestone, now reaching one billion people daily. The shares have risen about 6 percent from the end of October to Nov. 12.
Andreessen still owns almost 378,000 shares of Class B stock, but voting rights for Facebook don’t really matter anyway because CEO Mark Zuckerberg controls 60 percent of the board’s voting power. Andreessen’s shares were sold using the Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which means the shares are set to sell on a specific schedule to alleviate any issues of insider trading. The plan can also be designed to execute trades when the stock hits a certain price at a certain time, or allow the owners to designate a broker to buy or sell as they see fit, provided they don’t possess any inside information.
The sale is noteworthy. It’s a ton of money, and it’s not very common for executives to sell at the pace and quantity that Andreessen has been selling these past two weeks. Normally, pre-planned sales happen at regular, consistent intervals; these transactions are unusual, since a high number of them happened over just a couple of weeks. A spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment. But a dramatic sale like this certainly catches the eye.
Then again, it may just be a man cashing in on a really good bet. We’ll keep an eye out for any tweetstorms that may shed more light here.
Update: The story includes more information about 105b-1 trading plans.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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