Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have unloaded shares of the company in the past few days, according to their respective SEC filings. Google CEO Larry Page revealed in an SEC filing that he sold 66,672 shares of the company in an open market transaction dated Friday, March 20. He sold those shares at an average price of $562.19, generating $37.48 million in proceeds.
Larry Page still owns 22.32 million Google shares
Following the sale, Page directly owned 22.32 million Google shares, valued at approximately $12.54 billion. Prior to that, Page had offloaded 33,332 shares of the search engine giant on March 17 at an average price of $554.59. On March 16, he sold 33,332 Google shares at an average price of $557.26 for a total transaction value of $18.57 million.
Sergey Brin revealed in an SEC filing that he sold 33,332 shares of Google stock on Monday, March 23rd. Brin offloaded those shares at an average price of $562.58, generating $18.75 million in proceeds. Last month, the co-founders announced a plan to sell Google shares worth $4.4 billion over the next two years. After the multi-billion dollar sale, they will have little room for further stake sale without risking their combined control over the Internet giant.
Google co-founders to sell $4.4 billion worth of shares
At the end of January 2015, Page and Brin together owned 44.6 million Class-B shares and 44.6 million Class-C shares of Google stock. Under the new plan, they will each sell 2 million Class-B shares that will be automatically converted into Class-A upon sale, and another 2 million each of their Class-C stock. It means, once the transactions are complete, they will together own 40.6 million Class-B and 40.6 million Class-C shares of Google.
The planned sale of 8 million shares has been extended over a two-year period to minimize the market impact. Even after the sale, Page and Brin will remain in firm control of the Mountain View-based company. Though they will own only 11.9% of Google’s outstanding Class-A and Class-B stock after the sale, they will have 52% of the voting power. That’s because the Class-B shares owned by Page, Brin and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt have 10x the voting power of the Class-A stock.
Google shares jumped 2.74% to $580.87 at 12:05 PM EDT on Tuesday.
