After not selling a single share within two years, Zuckerberg was busy selling Meta's stocks throughout November.
On December 4th local time, foreign media discovered that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the parent company of social media platform Facebook, sold Meta stocks almost every day in November this year. Over the past month, he has sold over 600000 shares with a total value of over 180 million US dollars. This is also the first time since November 2021 that the entity managing the wealth of the Zuckerberg family has sold Meta stocks.
According to the documents submitted by Meta to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), throughout November, except for weekends and Thanksgiving on the 23rd, Zuckerberg sold 28009 shares on every trading day, with a total of 21 sales. And this momentum is not about to stop. On December 1st and December 4th, Zuckerberg sold 28009 shares respectively.
Affected by this news, Meta's stock price fell 1.48% to close at $320.02 on December 4th.
Zuckerberg continued to sell Meta stocks in November. Source: SEC official website (click to see larger image)
As of the end of November, Meta's stock price has risen by 172% this year, outperforming all US tech giants except Nvidia. Now, the total market value of Meta has reached $822.4 billion, and its stock price is gradually approaching the record high set in 2021. At that time, Zuckerberg and his charitable foundation sold over $1 billion in Meta stocks.
On the same day, there were also reports that Nvidia's executives and directors submitted documents in November showing that they had sold or planned to sell a total of approximately 370000 shares, with a total value of approximately $180 million. Nvidia's stock price was also affected on that day, falling by 2.68%.
According to foreign media statistics, in November, Zuckerberg's trust and entities used for charitable and political donations sold a total of approximately 682000 shares of stock through a trading plan, with a total value of approximately $185 million. At the age of 39, Zuckerberg still holds about 13% of Meta's shares, making up the largest portion of his total wealth of $117.7 billion. In addition to Meta, Zuckerberg is also pursuing multiple careers including venture capital and medical research.
Throughout the large-scale sell-off in November, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation, founded by the Zuckerberg couple, controlled over half of the shares. Previously, the Zuckerberg couple had promised to devote 99% of their wealth to charity during their lifetime.
Over the past decade, Zuckerberg has frequently sold Meta's stocks. Throughout 2022, Zuckerberg did not sell Meta's stocks because Meta's Q4 2021 financial report, released in February 2022, did not perform as expected and provided lower than expected quarterly guidance, resulting in Meta's stock price plummeting by 26% in one day and its market value evaporating by approximately $251.3 billion.
Although Meta's metaverse division has been consistently losing money, the company seems to be gradually recovering from the blow. After releasing his Q4 2022 financial report in February this year, Zuckerberg stated that the theme for this year is "Year of Efficiency," with the company's focus on improving efficiency, eliminating middle management, and "being more proactive in reducing underperforming or potentially less important projects.". At that time, Meta also stated that it would repurchase an additional $40 billion in stocks this year, and the company had already repurchased $27.93 billion in stocks throughout the fiscal year 2022.
On October 25th of this year, Meta announced its performance for the third quarter of the 2023 fiscal year as of September 30th, with a revenue of $34.146 billion, a 23% increase from the same period last year and higher than market expectations of $33.52 billion; Net profit increased by 164% year-on-year to $11.583 billion; Diluted earnings per share increased by 168% year-on-year to $4.39, higher than market expectations of $3.58. The financial report shows that advertising revenue accounts for over 98.5% of total revenue.