Early Facebook Investor Cashes Out Shares for $400 Million

When Facebook finally went public, the company's IPO was in the news for weeks. The company's shares closed at just over $38 per share following its first day on the NASDAQ. However, in the days and weeks that followed, shares tumbled. The company closed out its first week on the NASDAQ at just under $32 per share, and, at time of writing, FB shares were priced just shy of $20. Now it seems one of Facebook's earliest investors is cashing out the majority of his shares.

Yesterday it emerged Peter Thiel last week sold most of his remaining Facebook shares. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals Thiel sold 20.1 million shares last Thursday and Friday. This represents roughly 72 percent of the shares voted by Thiel. According to Bloomberg, Thiel's sale follows the expiration of restrictions on insider sales. The social network last week unlocked 271.1 million shares in what is the first of five insider-sale restrictions. The news outlet says another 1.44 billion shares will be freed up through November.

Thiel, co-founder of payments service PayPal, invested half a million dollars in Facebook in 2004, cementing himself as one of the site's earliest outside investors. According to the SEC filing, he raised $395.8 million on last week's sale. This is on top of the $640.1 million he generated in sales during Facebook's initial public offering.

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