Twitter’s stock took a beating on Tuesday, the first day that employees and early investors in the company could freely sell their shares after Twitter’s initial public offering in November.
On Thursday, investors got their first peek into who was unloading their stock, as the first insiders disclosed their sales in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The most prominent was Ali Rowghani, Twitter’s No. 2 executive, who exercised 300,000 stock options at 84 cents each on Tuesday and sold the shares for $33.76. He made a profit of about $9.9 million from the transaction. He still holds about 990,000 shares, according to the filing.
Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s general counsel, sold 13,346 shares for $33.77 on Tuesday, reaping proceeds of about $451,000. She still owns about 848,000 shares, the filing said.
Luca Baratta, the company’s vice president for finance, sold 9,285 shares for $31.44 on Tuesday, with proceeds of about $292,000. He, too, continues to hold a large stake of 331,904 shares, according to his filing.
A Twitter spokesman said some of the selling was to cover tax obligations.
A more mysterious set of filings was made by Twitter’s largest shareholder, Rizvi Traverse Management, the secretive money manager that controlled 85 million shares, or 14.4 percent of the stock.
Rizvi disclosed that it had distributed all of its shares to the underlying investors. Those investors included other Rizvi-controlled entities as well as units of JPMorgan Chase, the giant American bank, and Kingdom Holding, an investment company controlled by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.
Although JPMorgan and Rizvi hadpreviously signaled their intention to hold onto their shares, it’s unclear whether some of the recipients will choose to cash out, potentially adding to the selling pressure that drove Twitter stock to an all-time low of $29.51 this week.
Twitter shares closed on Thursday at $31.96.
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