Mark Zuckerberg has dumped $296 million worth of Facebook shares so far this month
- Mark Zuckerberg has sold almost 1.6 million Facebook shares so far this month, at a value of $296 million, CNBC reports.
- He's sold a total of 2.9 million shares in 2019, equivalent to $526 million.
- Zuckerberg said in 2017 he planned to sell between 35 and 75 million Facebook shares over an 18-month period to plug money into his philanthropy efforts.
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Facebook's CEO has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Facebook shares this month.
SEC filings show that so far this month Mark Zuckerberg has nearly 1.6 million Facebook shares, CNBC reports. This amounts to almost $296 million the tech mogul has cashed in.
CNBC notes that Zuckerberg had not sold any shares since April prior to August's sales burst. In total this year, he has sold 2.9 million shares, worth $526 million.
Although the shares dump might seem dramatic, Zuckerberg is still well under the total amount of shares he sold last year, when he unloaded 28.9 million for more than $5.3 billion.
Zuckerberg has said in the past that he dumps Facebook shares to pay for him and his wife Priscilla Chan's philanthropy efforts. In September 2017, he announced in a Facebook post that he expected to sell between 35 and 75 million shares over an 18-month period for this purpose. Facebook's shares stood at about $170 at the time, putting his goal in the $6 billion to $13 billion range.
However, Zuckerberg had to slam the brakes on this plan, most likely because the company's stock suffered after a series of scandals in 2018. Facebook has since recovered and closed at $182.04 per share on Thursday.