Another unfortunate effect of Hurricane Sandy—Facebook employees and shareholders whose lockup expired today may have to wait a few more days before selling shares. Today, lockups expired on 234 million shares, allowing these shareholders to trade their stock on the public markets. Except, the public markets are closed today, due to the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy in the New York area.
The NASDAQ, on which Facebook is listed, is closed today and perhaps for the next few days, along with the New York Stock Exchange. With these closures, all trading in the U.S. has been halted.
After August’s initial lockup expiration of 271 million shares, Facebook’s stock took a hit, falling to its lowest price at the time at $19.69. In August, Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners all sold, but Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft and Kleiner Perkins, kept their positions. The biggest sell off will probably take place on Nov. 14, when 777 million shares free up for trading.
Facebook’s stock, which closed Friday at $21.94, will most probably take another hit when this new set of shares can actually be sold. Facebook’s shares saw a boost after reporting better than expected earnings last week. As we reported last week, it’s unclear yet who is going to be selling in this round and how much.
Sheryl Sandberg (COO), David Fischer (VP of ads), Mike Schroepfer (VP of engineering), David Ebersman (CFO) and David Spillane (Chief Accounting Officer), and Ted Ullyot (General Counsel) all filed last week to notify the SEC their RSUs will vest into 45.3 million Class B shares today. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has committed to not sell any shares for at least a year.
We’ll see when the markets open again.