Facebook to allow employees to sell stock sooner. Read the filing here.

Facebook just announced in a SEC filing that it is allowing its employees to sell company shares earlier than Nov. 14, the initial end-date of a post-IPO lock-up. The social media giant’s rank and file will be allowed to dump, I mean, sell shares they own on Oct. 29, four trading days after the company is scheduled to announce its third-quarter financial results. That means an additional 234 million stocks “will be eligible for sale in the public market,” according to the filing.

Interestingly, the document also takes pains to highlight that CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be holding on to its share of the pie for a little while longer:

As of the date of this report, Mark Zuckerberg has not adopted a Rule 10b5-1 Plan and has informed us that he has no intention to conduct any sale transactions in our securities for at least 12 months. Mr. Zuckerberg currently holds in aggregate approximately 444 million shares of Class B common stock as well as 60 million shares of Class B common stock issuable upon the exercise of an option.

Shares of Facebook hit a new low of USD$17.55 today and then closed at $17.73, down over 53 per cent from their IPO price of $38. The twitterverse is going wild with bets that by October of next year they may be plumbing penny-stock territory.

Here’s the entire filing:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/104919557