Investors who fear they may have missed out on their chance to “double” their money with an investment in Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) can breath a little easier. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) announced today that shareholders including founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are planning a sale of 70 million shares of its Class A common stock. However, this big announcement has failed to impress the street, with shares falling over 4% in pre-market trading following the announcement. In today’s trading, the pps has continued to drop, with Facebook shares trading at $54.51, down $1.06 as of 1:26 PM EST.
Facebook to be added to S&P 500
Now that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) will be included in the S&P 500 index, Facebook will sell just over 27 million shares, with Zuckerberg and other insiders selling an additional 43 million. Zuckerberg is accounting for the lion’s share with a sale of over 41 million shares. Zuckerberg will see a return of $2.3 billion for selling the shares.
Following the closing on December 20th, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) will join the index and according to a Facebook press release the Class A shares will primarily be offered to index funds who base their trading on the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX).
Facebook SEC filing
While disclosing the sale in an SEC filing, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) did little to shed light on what would be done with the proceeds from the sale but did say, ”Our principal purpose for selling shares in this offering is to obtain additional capital. We intend to use the net proceeds to us from this offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes; however, we do not currently have any specific uses of the net proceeds planned. Additionally, we may use a portion of the proceeds to us for acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies, or other assets.”
However, the company did say that Zuckerberg’s proceeds would primarily be used to pay the taxes he will incur when he exercises a stock option to purchase an additional 60 million shares of Facebook Class B common stock.
Zuckerberg’s voting power not affected
The sale will not affect Zuckerberg’s voting power tremendously. He still retains over $444 million shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), and his present voting power of 58.8% will only fall to 56.1%.
