Spotify co-founder Martin Lorentzon has offloaded a mountain of shares in the streaming giant.
Yesterday (Wednesday, May 21), Lorentzon sold 1 million shares at Tuesday’s closing price of $658.60 per share, raising a total of $658.6 million.
That’s right: nearly $659 million in ONE GO.
The sale was executed through his holding company Rosello Co. Ltd, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, spotted by MBW.
The divestment came just five days after Lorentzon unloaded another 11,275 shares for $7.3 million on Friday (May 16), which was filed with the SEC under his full name, Sven Hans Martin Lorentzon, instead of his holding company Rosello.
The total amount cashed out across the two transactions over the past week from Lorentzon and his holding company, Rosello Co. Ltd, is a whopping $665.9 million.
Rosello is a Cyprus-registered holding company owned by Almatea, a Luxembourg-based firm whose sole shareholder is Spotify co-founder (and the firm’s former Chairman), Martin Lorentzon.
As previously reported by MBW, Rosello Company Ltd sold 959,762 shares on November 13, generating USD $383.75 million in proceeds for Rosello.
Lorentzon/Rosello also previously cashed out $81 million in Spotify stock on June 7 last year, plus a further $5.7 million on June 10, and an additional $85.8 million on July 25.
As such, Lorentzon/Rosello cashed out over $556 million in 2024, and accounted for roughly half the value of the $1.1 billion worth of stocks sold by Spotify’s executives and board directors last year.
Lorentzon/Rosello’s own Spotify stock cash outs in 2024 and 2025 (so far), combined, total over $1.2 billion.
He still maintains significant control over Spotify, with a 9.8% stake in the company as of mid-February and 41.6% voting power as of the end of 2024. That compares to co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek‘s 14.3% ownership stake that carries 29.1% voting power, according to SPOT’s most recent 20-F filing in February.
The timing of the latest cash outs follows Spotify’s first-quarter earnings report, which showed the streaming service’s Premium Subscriber base growing 12% YoY to 268 million, revenue growing 15% YoY to €4.190 billion ($4.4 billion) and quarterly operating income reached a record high of €509 million ($535.6 million).
Ek has also been divesting some of his Spotify holdings, selling another $28.8 million worth of company shares on April 30, the latest in a selling pattern that has now generated around $807.9 million in proceeds since mid-2023.
The latest transaction marked Ek’s ninth stock sale this year and his 19th since initiating the selling streak in July 2023.
Ek has established a biweekly selling pattern in 2025, cashing out about $267.8 million in Spotify stock since January.
In addition to owning a significant stake in Spotify, Lorentzon said in 2021 that he owns a 90% stake in Cervantes Capital AB, a private investment firm that he founded.
Back in March, Bloomberg reported that Cervantes Capital, which has received about $120 million of Lorentzon’s estimated $12.6 billion fortune, plans to more than double its assets under management by investing in stocks overlooked by major banks’ equity research teams.
“The investment team has been able to create proof-of-concept as an active, long-term owner in the Nordic public market,” Lorentzon said in emailed comments to Bloomberg. “They’re now ready to scale up their business.”
Stockholm-based Cervantes hold stakes in 14 Nordic companies worth a combined 2 billion kronor ($197 million), according to Bloomberg. Cervantes co-founder David Zaudy said the plan is to grow the firm’s assets to 5 billion kronor ($492m) in the coming years, the news outlet said in March.
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