Twitter CEO gives up $200M in stock for company employees
SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter (TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey is relinquishing stock worth more than $200 million so the messaging service can award the shares to its employees.
The gesture disclosed Friday in a regulatory filing comes a week after Dorsey announced that he was laying off 8 percent of Twitter's workforce in an effort to make the company profitable.
The gift represents nearly one-third of the stock Dorsey owns in the San Francisco company. After giving back 6.8 million shares, Dorsey will still own 15 million Twitter shares.
Dorsey's remaining stake will be worth about $460 million, based on Twitter's current market value.
🐥⚡️ I'm giving ~1/3rd of my Twitter stock (exactly 1% of the company) to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people.
— Jack (@jack) October 23, 2015
Twitter's stock gained 5 percent to $30.63 in Friday's afternoon trading.
The shares have declined by 40 percent in the past six months amid concerns about Twitter's inability to make money.