Mark Cuban Sells Facebook Stake

1:15 AM PDT 6/19/2012 by Georg Szalai

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Maury Phillips/Getty Images for DIRECTV

"It was gambling money," the billionaire investor says about his short-lived investment in the social network.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has sold his stake in social network Facebook just weeks after its much-criticized IPO, which had been marred by technical glitches.

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"I took my hit, my thesis was wrong," the billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner told CNBC, according to the Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/06/18/mark-cuban-sells-facebook-sta...
“I thought we’d get a quick bounce just with some excitement about the stock. I was wrong, and when you’re wrong you don’t wait, you just get out. I took a beating and left.”

Added Cuban: “It was gambling money, to be honest with you…Sometimes you’re right, Sometimes you’re wrong. This time I was wrong."

Last month, Cuban disclosed that he had bought 150,000 shares of Facebook for prices ranging from $31.97 to $33. Facebook's stock on Monday closed at $31.41. That is still well below its $38 IPO price.

The stock’s decline over its first month as a publicly traded company makes it the worst-performing U.S. IPO worth $1 billion or more, according to Dealogic data cited by the Journal.

While Facebook boosted the size of its IPO just day before it went public, LinkedIn last year kept the supply of stock more limited. Said Cuban: "If Facebook [had done] the same, the stock would be at about $200 right now."

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai