Facebook stock rise 2 percent as CEO Zuckerberg commits to not selling the stock

Facebook shares rose 2 percent in value in afterhours as CEO Mark Zuckerberg and two directors, and major investors in FB shares, said Tuesday in a statement that they do not intend to sell their stock.

In an 8-K filing on Tuesday to the Security and Exchange Commission Facebook said that the CEO and other two non-employee directors at the company have no intentions of making a sale transaction for the next one year.

Facebook stated that Zuckerberg “has informed us that he has no intention to conduct any sale transactions in our securities for at least 12 months.”

Although the two directors in questions, Marc Andreessen, a noted venture capitalist and creator of the legendary Netscape browser, and Donald Graham, CEO of the Washington Post, made almost the same commitment, they had one reservation. In the filing the company said that both Andreessen and Graham “have no present intention to sell any shares of our common stock held by them personally” other than to satisfy taxes incurred with the vesting of Facebook shares.

Facebook shares have been sliding downhill since the first lock-up period of 271 Million shares expired in August. Investors have been playing a very careful game as the company equity is not trading as it was first perceived to do so.

The lock-up expiration dates in the coming months, especially the ones coming in November and December, with volumes in billions, have filled investors with fear. However, Zuckerberg’s statement of committing to the relationship with his company has been reassuring.

The major reason for the sloppy performance of FB stock has been the unclear strategy to raise the profitability, which Facebook still says is going to come from advertisements. However, the recent shift in social network usage trend to mobile devices has put a big question mark on the underlying strategy.

Zuckerberg is expected to make the first public appearance since the IPO on May 18 at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=32170

Posted by Usman Khalid on Sep 5 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.