Facebook’s founder and chief executive is selling 41 million shares in the social networking giant as part of a secondary stock offering that will raise $3.8 billion for the company, Facebook said on Thursday in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Altogether 70 million shares will be sold to the public in the first new share offering since the company went public in May 2012.
Facebook had originally made provisions to sell the shares soon after the initial public offering (IPO) but was forced to backtrack after the share price fell below the $38 launch price.
However thanks to stronger advertising revenue, shares in the company have more than doubled this year and were trading at over $54 on Thursday.
The share issue comes as Facebook is set to join the S&P 500 stock index, and most of the new shares will be offered to mutual funds that need to hold Facebook stock in order to track the index, the filing said.
The company said that Zuckerberg would use most of his proceeds to pay taxes on stock options that he plans to take out that will enable him to retain his voting control of the public company.