Spotify CEO Daniel Ek Selling $100M in Company Shares

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is selling 675,000 shares of the company, according to an SEC filing released on Thursday. J.P. Morgan Securities was named as the broker.

Shares for sale: Ek's 675,000 SPOT shares top the $100 million valuation mark, and Spotify's current market capitalization is around $27.95 billion. Spotify's share price on Thursday was $144.52 and has been trading at its highest levels in over a year this month after a series of highs and lows. The price peaked at around $364 per share in February 2021, with the company's market capitalization reaching $70.5 billion, before falling more than 79% to around $75 per share in December 2022, eventually rising again.

Turnaround time: Ek's sale comes just over one year after he acquired 471,565 of those shares on the open market on May 5, 2022. "I’ve always been vocal about my strong belief in Spotify and what we are building," he said at the time. "So I am putting that belief into action this week by investing $50 million in SPOT. I believe our best days are ahead." With the offload, Ek remains the single largest shareholder in Spotify with 31.93 million shares, equating to around 16.5% of the total.

Spotify's latest: News of Ek's sale came days after Spotify revealed its Q2 earnings and announced that it would be following in the steps of nearly every other major streaming service and raising its price by $1, increasing the monthly fee for its Premium plan from $9.99 to $10.99. The company's total revenue in Q2 was €3.17 billion with a reported net loss of €302 million for the quarter. Since those numbers were released, Spotify shares have dropped more than 14%.