Denis Opudo
Snap Inc., a camera company which made its IPO in March 2017 is the parent company that runs Snapchat platform. Snapchat is a platform which allows image sharing among individuals, view live stories among other features. Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel are the co-founders of Snap Inc. When the startup began its operations, its shares were being sold at $17. However, after their first day of trading, the share prices rose to $24, indicating 44% growth. Therefore, the company’s worth suddenly increased from $24 billion to approximately $34 billion.
In August 2017, the co-founders announced that they will no longer sell the company shares. They made the decision to reduce the investor concerns at the period when employees were set to begin selling their shares publicly.
However, last week Evan Spiegel broke the silence when he sold some of his shares worth $50 million. This became the first sale he made since IPO and by the time he made the sales, the share prices were at $18.72. He made the move to counteract the internal challenges as the company’s shares drastically dropped for the first time since its IPO.
Moreover, by selling the shares worth $50 million, Evan only sold approximately 1% of his shares. The two co-founders own 88.5% of Snap’s share volume. Furthermore, Evan’s net-worth is approximately $4.5 billion.
Snap Inc. has faced backlash and resistance after redesigning its SnapChat platform. The new design which was rolled out in early February has received over 200,000 one star rating from its iOS users. Besides, Change.org petition has garnered more than one million signatures asking the company to rollback the new design.
However, Evan is not moved by the constant resistance and backlash. Instead, he said that the claims validate the reason for redesigning the platform. Furthermore, he said that the initial platform looked similar from all sides and that didn’t appeal to the founders. Therefore, he said that the complaints they continue to receive will reinforce the philosophy behind the redesign.
Notably, after selling the shares, the price of Snap rose to $20.42 by February 16, 2018. This was a 9% rise that would give the investors hope again.
The complaints from users have led to the drop of Snap Inc in the past few days. Considering this and other factors, Evan had to sale some of his shares. However, the buying and selling of shares by CEOs and founders is a common scenario these days. We recently witnessed when Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg sold some of his shares to fund his philanthropy. Moreover, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey has been seen buying stocks from other public companies.
