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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel sold roughly 2.7 million shares of stock last week, worth more than $50 million, which is his first personal stock sale since Snap went public last March.
The sale, which was executed as part of a prearranged sales plan that executives often use to avoid concerns over insider trading, was a small amount of Spiegel’s total holdings — a little more than 1 percent.
It’s not uncommon for public company executives to sell stock, but Spiegel’s sale is notable given that it’s his first since the company’s IPO. Spiegel and co-founder Bobby Murphy had previously pledged not to sell any shares in 2017, a promise intended to soothe any potential investor concerns around the time Snap’s employee lockup period ended.
Decisions by public company CEOs about when and how to sell their stock can be meaningful. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg rarely sold stock until he started doing so to fund his philanthropy; now he sells regularly, so much so that he initially tried to split Facebook’s stock in order to ensure he could keep selling without losing company control. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, on the other hand, has actually purchased stock on multiple occasions as a more symbolic way of showing faith in the company.
It’s too soon to know what Spiegel’s cadence will be, although he’s not in jeopardy of losing control of Snap: Spiegel and Murphy controlled a combined 88.5 percent of Snap’s voting power at the IPO. Spiegel’s net worth is around $4.5 billon.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
