51–60 of 65 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any way to edit the HN post title to be more accurate? "Zoom CEO sold $24m worth of stock" is still a pretty compelling headline.
> "Zoom CEO sold $24m worth of stock" is still a pretty compelling headline. Is it? That's like a quarter percent of his holdings.
my calc says 0.025%
ZM has two classes of Common Stock - Class A & Class B. Looks like Eric exited his Class A shares but he still holds over $4B+ USD in Class B. source: https://docoh.com/company/1773298/yuan-eric-s/insider-owners...
He didn't exit class A, he didn't hold it in the first place. Instead, he converted a small percentage of his class B into class A, and sold it.
Selling those Class A shares is still exiting a position in Class A.
But you're definitely right about the context!
He merely converted some Class B shares (non-publicly traded with 10X voting rights) to Class A (publicly traded) in order to sell them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any way to edit the HN post title to be more accurate? "Zoom CEO sold $24m worth of stock" is still a pretty compelling headline.
If he has stock worth $10 billion, it's insignificant.
Frankly it seems reasonable to me to sell off some shares to "lock in" some of the gains; I'm not sure that shows a lack of confidence going forward.
Besides, there's a lot of reasons to sell shares. Maybe he's buying a house.
This is complete nonsense. He sold about $23m worth of stock [1], while he owned about 22% of stock at the time of IPO, worth roughly ~$10b in total. [1] https://www.gurufocus.com/news/1135874/zoom-video-communicat...
Is there any way to edit the HN post title to be more accurate? "Zoom CEO sold $24m worth of stock" is still a pretty compelling headline.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you cannot work it out from this form. it tells you what he’s selling and when it was acquired. it does look bad though
From the form, he has many many more class B shares that he didn’t sell. This was only a small proportion - maybe he’s buying a yacht?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any way to edit the HN post title to be more accurate? "Zoom CEO sold $24m worth of stock" is still a pretty compelling headline.
Just flag it. I really don't think your proposed headline would have gotten any traction here and would have immediately dropped off the front page.
That's OK with me.
You cant really blame him. Zoom is currently valued at around 60 times its annual recurring revenues. Their share price has tripled since January. The whole crisis was a fantastic opportunity for them, but it also means that it is going to become critical for microsoft, google and all to offer a competitive product sooner rather than later, considering how many companies are going remote. The competitive advantage of…
How do you interpret this? The first row he acquired 70,143 at a cost of $0, and the amount he owns after that is 70,143? So he didn't have any before the 11th? Then he sells them all for $LOTS, and then acquires another 70,143 at a cost of $0, and sells them all again? Is this just him cashing out a bonus paid in class A when his actual holdings (assuming he held any before the 11th) are in some other class?
If you scroll down in the sheet, you can see that he also disposed of the same number of class B shares. He is simply converting a small number of his class B shares (not publicly traded, 10X voting rights) to class A so he can sell them.
Perhaps this isn’t the best thing for the company, but personally, I can’t imagine having even ten million dollars in stocks (what seems to be the value of the stocks sold per my calculation) and wanting to just keep them there, especially in a single stock. Sell it all, and donate all but three or four million. That’s more enough money to live the rest of your life in a very comfortable way. What’s the point of havi…
Similarly, it's not "just a rat race to show off", either – though there's some of that, as a psychological motive among the very-rich. That's still not sufficient to describe the logic of what's actually going on.
Rather, ownership of such highly-valuable assets is about the control it offers, over how those assets are used. In this case, the primary asset is "Zoom Video Communications Inc", and all its intangible & tangible assets, including experienced staff, intellectual property, brands, relationships with locked-in users bases, etc.
If Eric Yuan wants to guarantee he retains the largest influence over what Zoom does in the future – because he has pride of creation, because he believes it's a valuable service for society, because he finds it an intellectually stimulating way to live life & exercise his unique talents, moreso than just being a 'consumer', he must retain the lion's share of equity ownership. Such ownership is how our society tracks control over big synergistic flotillas of resources.
The theoretical amount of lifetime-consumption that ownership could instead represent, if sold, is a tangential detail to the full significance of the holding. And, a true plan to "sell it all" would likely cause much of the value to evaporate – as some of the perceived trading value of the circulating shares is premised on the founder's continued immersion in the business.
To a limited extent, the ability to liquidate "a little", & thus get the lifetime-consumption-security that you've portrayed as the whole "point", is relevant – but not because it completes Yuan's ambition, ensuring a lifetime of 'comfort', but because it could allow even more focus on the bigger social enterprise involved.