Marc Andreessen Sold 73 Percent of His Facebook Stock in the Last Two Weeks

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen is padding his wallet ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Andreessen, an early Facebook investor and board member since 2008, has sold over 1.5 million shares of Facebook stock in the past two weeks at a value of roughly $160 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Since Oct. 30, Andreessen has offloaded more than 73 percent of his total ownership in the company, and 90 percent of his class A shares (the shares that don’t carry any voting rights).

The sales occurred around the time Facebook reported its quarterly earnings on Nov. 4. The company beat analysts’ estimates and hit a new milestone, now reaching one billion people daily. The shares have risen about 6 percent from the end of October to Nov. 12.

Andreessen still owns almost 378,000 shares of Class B stock, but voting rights for Facebook don’t really matter anyway because CEO Mark Zuckerberg controls 60 percent of the board’s voting power. Andreessen’s shares were sold using the Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which means the shares are set to sell on a specific schedule to alleviate any issues of insider trading. The plan can also be designed to execute trades when the stock hits a certain price at a certain time, or allow the owners to designate a broker to buy or sell as they see fit, provided they don’t possess any inside information.

The sale is noteworthy. It’s a ton of money, and it’s not very common for executives to sell at the pace and quantity that Andreessen has been selling these past two weeks. Normally, pre-planned sales happen at regular, consistent intervals; these transactions are unusual, since a high number of them happened over just a couple of weeks. A spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment. But a dramatic sale like this certainly catches the eye.

Then again, it may just be a man cashing in on a really good bet. We’ll keep an eye out for any tweetstorms that may shed more light here.

Update: The story includes more information about 105b-1 trading plans.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via