If that’s not the textbook image of rats leaving a sinking ship, I don’t know what is. “Fuck you. Got mine!”
The price pump that conveniently happened immediately after release sure was nice for Pig Boy Huffman, wasn’t it.
Data on short positions become available tomorrow (April 9th) as referenced in this article so the roller coaster is only just getting started. It’s gonna get wild once the market realizes what a house of cards Reddit is built on.
$40m isn’t that much for a company with a valuation of Reddits.
Not really any conspiracy here
It is when you consider that it was roughly 80% of the stock they held.
Is there a source for that? Don’t get me wrong, I think reddit is over valued as an unprofitable company but the 80% number smells wrong.
According to the article he sold 500k shares but according the S-1 he was granted 662,447 as a bonus for achieving above a 5B market cap (he did, it was a low target), that’s on top of the 4.6M shares he holds in mixed class A/B.
For someone paid so much in stock it’s not uncommon to want to gain some liquidity and lock in some earnings.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024006294/reddits-1q423.htm
This figure doesn’t really pass the smell test, given that it’s been repeated to death that the CEO makes $193 million, with the vast majority being stocks. Can you source the claim?
Their market cap today is something like $7.5bn?
$40m would be like 0.5%
This is not news as much as we all want it to be, they definitely have much more than that, even if it’s tied up in an RSU scheme or something.
So what do you do when you have stock in a private company while still working at it. I imagine if you are heavily compensated with equity you will take going public as an opportunity to offload and diversity.
They’re just being capitalists. Having 80% of your portfolio in a single entity isn’t smart.
I don’t think they’re saying they did it for price manipulation, I think they’re saying they ditched the shares because they thought the price would tank
Isn’t it true that a lot of stock dips down after an initial IPO high? Even if the company is solid? I’m not sure this isn’t typical or even expected behavior for even well run companies.
Generally C-level employees and officers are prohibited from selling for several months after an IPO. The restriction is common for a couple of reasons. First is it protects initial investors from added risk of the sale by the people running the company being perceived as a red flag causing a significant drop in the stock price. Second it protects the C-level employees and officers from the appearance of insider trading.
The SEC has rules in place on how high level management can trade in the stocks for their own companies to make it difficult for them to trade on non-public information. A large stock sale shortly after a significant event like an IPO can trigger an investigation. To sale the shares legally before a 90 day cool down had passed they would have needed to file a notice of the sale with the SEC and provided justification for not observing the cool down period.
This is usually true, but since this isn’t being reported as illegal trading, I’m not sure what the circumstances actually are.
But it is for sure not a good look to have c-suite shares being dumped. It gives the appearance of a lack of confidence in the share price and long-term profitability