Golly! Come November 14, Will Zuck Be Selling Facebook Shares, Too?

by YCharts Staff August 14, 2012

A whole lotta Facebook (FB) shares are about to hit the market. As the New York Times, Bloomberg and others are pointing out, almost 2 billion shares will be hitting the market in the next few months. Lock-ups start expiring this week and will ultimately dwarf the shares currently trading.

The market won’t be surprised if many of the current holders – including Goldman Sachs (GS) and Facebook employees -- dump stock when they can. Early investors have reportedly cashed out $9 billion, and some mutual funds have also dumped shares. A former Facebook employee quoted in the story predicted employees would cash in stock options pronto.

Certainly, shareholders would be in better shape if they’d been allowed to sell earlier.

FB data by YCharts

This Thursday’s lock-up involves 271 million shares held by stockholders – other than Mark Zuckerberg. Zuck is locked out of a couple of expiring lock-ups, this one, another that starts in October, and again in September. The most recent quarterly filing does say that 60 million shares “subject to the partially exercised stock option held by Mr. Zuckerberg will be eligible for sales on November 14, 2012.”

That’s the same day 1.2 billion shares will be eligible for sale. That’s the day we’re putting on the calendar.

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