The social-media giant’s co-founder and CEO offloaded shares in his company for the first time in two years
Mark Zuckerberg cashed in on his company’s 2023 stock rally in a big way — selling nearly $428 million worth of shares in Meta Platforms Inc. over the final two months of the year.
The Meta META, -0.53% co-founder and chief executive offloaded just under 1.8 million shares over the course of every trading day between Nov. 1 and the end of last year, according to a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.
The sales were in accordance with a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted by Zuckerberg in July and saw him capitalize on Meta’s rebounding stock price, which soared 194.1% in 2023 — and nearly threefold since it hit a seven-year low in November 2022. By comparison, the S&P 500 SPX and the Nasdaq Composite COMP indexes gained 24.2% and 43.4%, respectively, in 2023.
The moves also broke a two-year hiatus, dating back to November 2021, during which Zuckerberg did not sell any of his stock in the Facebook parent company, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news. Zuckerberg, who owns roughly 13% of Meta, is ranked the seventh-richest person in the world with a net worth of $125 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nasdaq-listed Meta shares, which fell 0.5% on Wednesday to $344.47, are now roughly 11% off their all-time closing high of $382.18 from September 2021.
Representatives for Meta could not immediately be reached for comment.