The stock price of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) declined by 1.6 percent to $18.91 per share, its lowest intraday price during the past three weeks. The shares of the company fell, due to concerns that Facebook employees might start selling their holdings in the company after lockup expiration, as we reported last week.
On November 14, there will be additional 749 million outstanding shares and 28 million shares underlying pre-2011 RSUs, not held by current employees, will be available for sale. On December 24, another 156 million shares will be lifted from trading restrictions.
On May 18 2013, the 47.3 million shares owned by Mail.ru Group Limited and DST Global Limited and its respective affiliates will be available for trading. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s holdings in the company were not included in the figure, because he previously stated that he will not sell his stakes in the company until September next year.
The first Facebook stock lock-up expired August 16, which accounts for 271.1 million shares owned by early investors, including Global Ltd., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Elevation Partners, Accel Partners, and Peter Thiel.
Peter Thiel sold more than 20 million shares of Facebook for $396 million, at a price range of $19.27 to $20.69 per share, to Founder’s Fund Management LLC, Rivendell One LLC, and Lembas LLC, while Accel partners distributed 57.8 million shares to its limited partners.
Meanwhile, Ebay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY)’s senior manager of social business unit, Jennifer Wehrmaker, expressed her criticism on Facebook’s Ad Exchange. According to her, it is difficult for advertisers to get creative on the social networking giant’s advertising platform because of its restrictive creative upload requirements.
Wehrmaker said, “For eBay dynamic creative is the real win. We have dynamic inventory and millions of [products] across categories. Because of Facebook’s restrictive creative upload requirements, that level of creative automation is simply not possible. You have to be thoughtful about measurement and creative, but it’s not a big stretch from what we’ve already been doing in the ad exchange space.” Ebay is one of the largest advertisers of Facebook.
The social network giant allows advertisers to use its Facebook Studio Edge to maximize their creativity, but the use of bold banners is restricted.
