Meta’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Javier Olivan has sold a portion of his holdings in the company, which likely put greater pressure on the tech stock amid the recent selloff. The top executive has offloaded 490 shares of Class A Common Stock at a price of $501.18 per share, totaling over $245,578, according to recent regulatory filings by the social media giant to the US stock exchanges.
The transaction, which took place on April 19, 2024, was executed under a pre-arranged trading plan, which allows the top company insiders to sell shares at predetermined times to avoid accusations of trading on nonpublic information. Following the sale, Olivan retains a direct ownership of 7,089 shares of Meta Platforms, according to a report by Investing.com.
Meta sparks tech selloff on Wall Street
The offloading of company shares comes at a time when shares of Meta Platforms has plunged 13 per cent so far on Thursday, sparking a sell-off in big technology stocks on Wall Street, after the social media firm signaled its costly bet on artificial intelligence (AI) could take years to pay off.
The drop was set to erase nearly $170 billion from the company’s market value and triggered a fall of 3-4 per cent in shares of AI-focused Microsoft and Alphabet, both of which report earnings after market close.
The focus on AI spending, however, sparked a more than two per cent jump in shares of Nvidia, Broadcom and Marvel Technology, which analysts have called the picks and shovels of the generative AI boom. Intel, which has missed out on the AI-led rally, was up 0.7 per cent ahead of earnings.
Meta’s AI bets spook investors
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who floored Wall Street last year with his cost-cutting drive, said on a post-earnings call that costs would grow “meaningfully” over the coming years before the company makes “much revenue” from some of its AI products. This has instilled fears among investor that Zuckerberg was plunging Meta into another costly endeavor at a time when its augmented and virtual reality business was losing billions of dollars each quarter.
Meta forecast April-June revenue below estimates and raised the bottom end of its 2024 total expense forecast by $2 billion on Wednesday. It also raised the top end of its capital expenditure view as it invests in data centers essential to its efforts to catch up with AI frontrunners OpenAI and Microsoft.
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Published: 25 Apr 2024, 09:37 PM IST