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Move confirms strategic move to buy up services with younger users
Illustration photo shows "likes" on WhatsApp's
Facebook page displayed on a laptop screen. / MAL
Langsdon (REUTERS)
Facebook on Wednesday reached a "final
agreement" to acquire the popular instant messaging company WhatsApp for a total 19 billion dollars (over 13.8 billion
euros). The transaction is a mixed cash and stock arrangement in which the
social network will first pay out four billion dollars in cash and 12 billion in
Facebook stock options, then later add another three billion dollars in
Restricted Stock Unit for WhatsApp's founders and employees, transferable over
four years following closure of the deal.
The acquisition is the latest move by Facebook to ensure it is not left
behind, even as analysts warn about trouble up ahead for the 10-year-old
brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, who is expected at the Mobile World
Congress event in Barcelona next week.
For a year now, younger users have been losing interest in the arch-popular
social networking site, which explains Facebook's strategic move to buy up
services with younger users, such as Instagram and, now, WhatsApp.
In 2011, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm called Sequoia Capital
invested 30 million dollars in WhatsApp, which, developed by the entrepreneurs
Brian Acton and Jan Koum, is now valued at 19 billion dollars
gauging by Facebook's purchase price. Meanwhile, Facebook, which had its IPO in
Wall Street in 2012, is now worth 172.9 billion dollars, while its 2013 profits
surged past one billion euros.
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