Facebook Inc. top honcho Mark Zuckerberg has unloaded $111 million of his company's stocks in the past seven days, Securities and Exchange Commission documents showed.
The sold 368,600 shares are valued at $68 million, with the social media tycoon reportedly selling another 237,000 shares late Monday to fund a charity initiative named after him and his wife.
For August alone, Zuckerberg has sold almost 1.7 million shares valued at around $297 million, regulatory records showed, which also disclosed that he unloaded nearly 3 million shares to the tune of $525 million so far this week.
The 35-year-old billionaire sells Facebook Inc (FB) shares on a regular basis and a good portion of his recent stock sales have been connected to fund his Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization. The CZI supports efforts in education, science, and a host of relevant issues like social justice.
But Zuckerberg is not the only Facebook executive to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of shares in the last few weeks. Facebook board member and billionaire investor Peter Thiel, and Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner have also disclosed unloading thousands of shares recently, with Thiel's capital investment company Founders Fund selling 22,247 shares valued at over $4 million, and Wehner unloading 11,035 shares at $2 million. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has also reported selling 104,014 shares valued at nearly $19 million last August 16.
Zuckerberg's share sales come at a time when the social media giant's stocks are skyrocketing. Facebook shares have been soaring 40 percent so far this year. Zuckerberg's stock sales also come as the company faces increased scrutiny by regulators. The US Justice Department announced a series of wide-ranging antitrust review of the world's biggest online firms last month.
Facebook owns a huge chunk of the US social media pie: 52 percent market share, for the month of July, StatCounter Data reported. Amazon, on the other hand, controls the US e-commerce market with a 48 percent share, based on eMarketer data. Amazon's biggest rival, eBay, has only 6 percent market share, while Google dominates the US online search business with almost 90 percent market hold, data by StatCounter showed.
Facebook's stock was trading at $180.35 a share during Monday's extended session, slipping from a week ago when the company was trading at over $200.
