14 DAY TRIAL // In the past year alone, Mark Zuckerberg has sold more than $1 billion worth of Facebook stock. The money, it seems, goes into funding the philanthropic organization that bears his and his wife's name - the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
According to Facebook's annual proxy statement, which is a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that includes information about the stock ownership of the top executives and board members of Facebook, Zuckerberg had some 9.6 million shares fewer than he did a year ago. Based on the closing share price last week, that puts the shares' value at $1.3 billion.
Of course, that's not actually the real value as the Facebook share price goes up and down based on a wide range of variables. Nonetheless, it's a large sum that Zuckerberg needs to fund this other passion of his.
This isn't a strange move for a top exec. In fact, one of Twitter's founders announced just recently that he would be doing pretty much the same thing by selling up to 30% of his stock over a one-year period in order to fund other ventures.
Money for the fight against diseases
As mentioned, for Zuckerberg, the money goes into the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic investment vehicle the couple announced after the birth of their daughter, Max. They committed to investing $3 billion over the next decade to fund research that would try to find cure for all diseases in the world.
Even though Zuckerberg sold a slice of his shares at Facebook, he still has 59.7% of the company's voting power, which is just down from 60.1% from last year. Basically, selling $1 billion worth of stock barely made a dent in his control over the company.
According to documents, Zuckerberg has a pre-set trading plan indicating he will sell or gift no more than $1 billion worth of Facebook stock each year, through 2018. Even though the value of the shares he sold this round is higher, the amount was spread over 2016 and 2017.