Mark Zuckerberg sold nearly half a billion dollars of Meta Platforms shares in the final two months of 2023 after a two-year hiatus in which the company’s stock price hit its lowest in seven years.
The Meta CEO sold shares on every trading day between 1 November and the end of the year, unloading nearly 1.28 million shares for about US$428-million, according to a Tuesday regulatory filing.
On average, each sale took in $10.4-million, with the largest on 28 December at $17.1-million.
Before this period, Zuckerberg had not sold Meta shares since November 2021. The company’s share price rebounded 194% last year from a seven-year low near the end of 2022. Meta shares outperformed those of every other major tech giant except Nvidia last year and is now near its September 2021 record high.
Zuckerberg, 39, owns about 13% of Meta and has a net worth of about $125-billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the seventh-richest person in the world.
Meta did not reply to a request for comment.
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Marc Benioff, Zuckerberg’s peer in the tech world, also sold shares nearly every day in the second half of 2023. The Salesforce co-founder unloaded more than $475-million worth of shares during the period, selling about 15 000 shares — about $3 million — every day. — Rachel Phua, with Graham Starr, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP