Mark Zuckerberg benefited greatly from his company's 2023 stock rally by selling nearly $428 million worth of Meta Platforms Inc. stock in the final two months of the year.
The Meta META, -0.53% co-founder and CEO dumped nearly 1.8 million shares during each trading day between Nov. 1 and the end of last year, according to a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday.
The sales were in line with a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan that Zuckerberg adopted in July and allowed him to benefit from Meta's rebounding stock price, which rose 194.1% in 2023 – nearly tripling , since hitting a seven-year low in November 2022. In comparison, the S&P 500 SPX and Nasdaq Composite COMP indices gained 24.2% and 43.4%, respectively, in 2023.
The moves also broke a two-year pause dating back to November 2021 during which Zuckerberg did not sell any of his shares in the Facebook parent company, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news. Zuckerberg, who owns about 13% of Meta, is the seventh-richest person in the world with a net worth of $125 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nasdaq-listed Meta shares, which fell 0.5% to $344.47 on Wednesday, are now about 11% below their September 2021 all-time closing high of $382.18.
Representatives for Meta could not immediately be reached for comment.