Facebook Shares Down As Co-Founder Offloads More Stock

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz continues to offload yet more shares in the social network giant.

Moskovitz is already a billionaire many times over thanks to his 7.6 percent shareholding in Facebook. He, along with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes founded Facebook back in their Harvard University days.

Share Sell-Off

Moskovitz has already sold over 1.35 million of his shares in the social network over the last two weeks, according to Reuters. This week alone he has reportedly sold a total of 450,000 Class A shares at prices ranging from $19.19 (£12.11) to $19.22 (£12.14) a share. It is reported that the share sell-off has netted Moskovitz approximately $26m (£16.4m).

It seems Moskovitz has been offloading 150,000 shares a day shortly after an investor share sale prevention order (designed to stop jittery shareholders dumping stock after an IPO) expired on 19 August.

This leaves the Dustin A. Moskovitz Trust with 6.15 million A shares. However his trust still retains the more important 106.8 million B shares, which carry voting rights. These B shares can be converted to Class A shares on a one-to-one basis at any time.

Moskovitz however is not the only Facebook executive selling off shares in the social networking giant.

Venture capitalist and Facebook board member Peter Thiel reportedly sold 20 million Facebook shares earlier this month, a move that reportedly brought him a $400 million (£253m) windfall. On top of that, other key staff and workers have also taken the opportunity to sell some shares.

Plummeting Value

Facebook’s share price has certainly experienced a torrid time since the company was floated back in May this year, a move that gave it a value of  $104 billion (£65.7 billion).

Many felt the shares were overvalued when they were floated at the IPO price of $38 (£24) per share and by mid August, the share price had halved down to $19.92 (£12.57).

And as of 30 August 1pm BST, Facebook shares fell again and were trading at a new low of $19.10 (£12.07) on Nasdaq.

Onlookers have been concerned about the decline of Facebook’s share price for some time now, with some suggesting Facebook is failing to prove it could make substantial profit from advertising. Eighty-four percent of Facebook’s income is derived from advertising and a Swiss bank has even considered launching legal action over the matter.

But there was some relief in late July when the Menlo Park, California-based social network revealed first quarter revenues of $1.18 billion (£752m), a figure that exceeded a consensus $1.147 billion (££731m) from analysts. It also posted a net loss of $157 million (£100m), which included $465 million (£296m) in property buying and leasing expenses.

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