Facebook's Mega Stock Lock-Up Expires Today, Share Price Sees Early Surge
Wall Street's going to be busy today as some 800 million Facebook shares held by insiders become eligible to trade, completely free of previous lock-up provisions. This isn't the first wave of restricted Facebook stock to be freed up -- Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has already offloaded more than $11 million worth of previously restricted shares, and so have a few other executives -- but it's by far the biggest wave.
All eyes are on Facebook today to see how many shares change hands. Despite the drop in overall value compared to Facebook's $38 IPO price, the stock is still valuable and will make a lot of people rich.
NASDAQ's trading hours kicked off an hour ago, and already shares of Facebook are up more than 9 percent. At the time of this writing, the social networking site's stock is trading at $21.67 per share, giving Facebook a market capitalization of $47.04 billion. The early surge is a bit of a surprise to some investors who expected the stock to tank, especially considering the share price's downward trend in the past six months.
All eyes are on Facebook today to see how many shares change hands. Despite the drop in overall value compared to Facebook's $38 IPO price, the stock is still valuable and will make a lot of people rich.
NASDAQ's trading hours kicked off an hour ago, and already shares of Facebook are up more than 9 percent. At the time of this writing, the social networking site's stock is trading at $21.67 per share, giving Facebook a market capitalization of $47.04 billion. The early surge is a bit of a surprise to some investors who expected the stock to tank, especially considering the share price's downward trend in the past six months.
