Zuckerberg sold nearly half a billion dollars of Meta stock in last two months

By Rachel Phua

Mark Zuckerberg sold nearly half a billion dollars of Meta Platforms Inc. shares in the final two months of 2023 after a two-year hiatus in which the company’s stock price hit its lowest in seven years.

The Meta chief executive sold shares on every trading day between November 1 and the end of the year, unloading nearly 1.28 million shares for about $428 million, according to a Tuesday regulatory filing.

On average, each sale took in $10.4 million, with the largest on December 28 at $17.1 million.

Before this period, Zuckerberg had not sold Meta shares since November 2021. The company’s share price rebounded 194 per cent last year from a seven-year low near the end of 2022. Meta shares outperformed those of every other major tech giant except Nvidia Corp. last year and is now near its September 2021 record high.

Zuckerberg, 39, owns about 13 per cent of Meta and has a net worth of about $125 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the seventh-richest person in the world.

Zuckerberg primarily sells Meta shares to fund philanthropic initiatives, according to company spokesperson. He has pledged to give away 99 per cent of his stake to charitable purposes.

Marc Benioff, Zuckerberg’s peer in the tech world, also sold shares nearly every day in the second half of 2023. The Salesforce Inc. co-founder unloaded more than $475 million worth of shares during the period, selling about 15,000 shares — about $3 million — every day.