Bloomberg — Shares of Nu Holdings Ltd., the world’s biggest standalone digital bank, tumbled Thursday after co-founder and chief executive officer David Vélez sold a part of his stake in the Brazil-based firm.
Nubank, as it’s known, fell as much as 8.6% in New York trading, the most on an intra-day basis since April, before paring declines. The bank is still up 73% on the year and posted second-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates earlier this week.
Vélez, 41, said in an interview that he shed 3% of his shares in Nubank, his first sale since a 2021 initial public offering, for “general portfolio management” reasons. The sale will help fund growth in his philanthropic foundation that he founded last year with his wife Mariel Reyes under the banner VelezReyes+.
“I didn’t want to do this until at Nubank we could remove a lot of important doubts like: Can you ever make money? Can you keep growing? And the last three quarters have been phenomenal,” Velez said Wednesday. “So now I’m taking 3% of the chips off the table to start increasing in investing in the other side of the big mission that is driving us today.”
Another co-founder, Cristina Junqueira, also sold shares earlier this year.
The digital bank that also operates in Mexico and Colombia has 11 buy recommendations from analysts with 6 holds and 2 sells, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
*Story corrected Aug 17 at 16:04ET to remove text from unrelated story.
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