Facebook Inc (FB) Executives Athwal And Stretch Unload Shares

Updated on

2014 has been an exceptional year for Facebook Shares of the world’s largest social networking company have soared 43% year-to-date, thanks to its successful transition to mobile. Many Facebook insiders continue to cash in on the soaring stock prices by offloading their shares. The latest to sell their Facebook shares are Chief Accounting Officer Jas Athwal and General Counsel Colin Stretch.

Facebook Inc (FB) Executives Athwal And Stretch Unload Shares

Athwal still holds 123,567 shares

Athwal revealed in a Form 4 filing with the SEC (via All Facebook) that he sold 1,500 class-A shares of the company at $78.49 in open market transaction on Dec.15. Following the sale, Athwal now owns 123,367 shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). Stretch sold 1,000 shares at $76.20 apiece on Dec.16. He still holds 59,482 Facebook shares. However, these are not the only executives trimming their holdings.

On Nov.20, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) CFO David Wehner dumped all his stock in the open market for a total of $840,000. Wehner had sold all his 11,533 class-A Facebook shares at $72.80 each. Director Susan Desmond-Hellmann had sold 625 shares at the same price in the same week for a total proceeds of $45,500. Following the transaction, she held about 12,000 shares of the social networking giant.

Facebook accounts for 21% of time spent on the Internet

On Nov.19, CTO Mike Schroepfer also unloaded a small parcel of the company shares. He exercised 20,000 restricted stock units and sold them immediately. He sold them at an average price of $74.01, but Schroepfer still owned 321,559 shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). A report from Sandvine suggests that the Menlo Park-based company continues to strengthen its position in mobile. The report says that Facebook accounts for about 20% of all data used on mobile devices. In terms of data traffic, it is second only to YouTube.

On Dec.16, JPMorgan issued a bullish report on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth reiterated his Outperform rating on the stock with $85 price objective. Citing a report from comScore, he said that Facebook accounted for 21% of the total time spent on the Internet. Anmuth said that users spend 8.5x the minutes on Facebook than they spend on competitive services.

Leave a Comment