Facebook Buys Whatsapp for 19 Billion - Everything You Need to Know!

Facebook Buys Whatsapp For 19 Billion - With so much money thrown around in Silicon Valley, it's not easy for a procurement to trigger a stir. Facebook's (FB) purchase of WhatsApp in 2014 did simply that-- exceeding Google's (GOOG) $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs and Apple's (AAPL) $3 billion Beats Electronics procurement-- to end up being 2014's top purchase and also among the biggest tech acquires of all time.

WhatsApp, a message messaging application made use of commonly across the globe, swiped headings with its preliminary $16 billion proposal from Facebook. In 2013, the app shed $138 million and brought in $10.2 million in profits. So how did the firm sway Facebook? This short article takes a look at Facebook's record breaking procurement as well as the actions it required to arrive.

Facebook Buys Whatsapp For 19 Billion

Facebook Buys Whatsapp For 19 Billion


It ends up he's sold greater than 22 million shares worth roughly $2.8 billion considering that January.

Facebook agreed to buy WhatsApp in February 2014 for over $19 billion in stock, and the rate had actually increased to $22 billion by October, when the deal closed, thanks to Facebook's increasing stock rate. Koum had regarding 45% of the business when he sold it, Forbes estimates, which suggests his take on paper was about $10 billion. He also got a seat on Facebook's board.

At the end of 2015, according to Facebook's yearly proxy filing, Koum owned over 60 million shares of ordinary shares. He also had another 19 million restricted supply devices, which vest gradually as well as function as a reward for him to stick around till November 2018.

Based upon that vesting schedule, it resembles he's earned concerning 3 million of those RSUs until now this year.

So on the whole, he's offered regarding one-third of his existing risk in Facebook this year.

Koum's stock sales come as WhatsApp remains to proliferate and also as the firm is making changes to the solution that could open brand-new moneymaking possibilities, yet likewise runs the risk of alienating some customers.

On Thursday, Facebook introduced that WhatsApp was altering its personal privacy policy for the very first time since the purchase to permit Facebook to see the contact number that a user shares when they register for WhatsApp. Facebook can use this information to allow companies to get in touch with users straight through WhatsApp, as they can already do via Messenger, and also will certainly enable Facebook to show more pertinent advertisements to logged-in customers. Nevertheless, WhatsApp claimed it would not share these telephone number directly with customers.

WhatsApp passed more than than 1 billion regular monthly users in February as well as is one of the most popular chat application in majority of the globe, according to current statistics from SimilarWeb.

Facebook had no comment on the sales, as it doesn't discuss individuals' investment choices.