GoPro Founders Get Permission To Break The Lock-Up Restriction, Shares Are Tumbling

GoPro is breaking its lock-up restriction.

On Wednesday, GoPro announced that its founders Nick and Jill Woodman will gift about 5.8 million shares from their personal stake in the company to the Nicholas + Jill Woodman Foundation.

Under an agreement with JPMorgan, the Woodmans will be released from the lock-up restriction that prevents company insiders from selling shares within a certain timeframe after a company's public debut, typically about 180 days. In other words, these shares wouldn't have been allowed until some time in 2015.

GoPro shares have been on an absolute tear, up 177% since its IPO. In early trading on Thursday, shares of GoPro were down more than 4%.

Here's the full release from GoPro:

SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- GoPro, Inc. (NASDAQ: GPRO), enabler of some of today's most immersive and engaging content, today announced that GoPro's husband and wife founders, Nicholas and Jill Woodman, have provided a personal gift towards establishing a new charitable organization, The Jill + Nicholas Woodman Foundation. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, the lead book-running managers of the Company's June 2014 public sale of 20,470,000 shares of Class A common stock, has agreed to release the charitable organization from a lock-up restriction, effective October 3, 2014, with respect to the 5,821,739 shares of the Company's Class A common stock gifted to it. Nicholas Woodman, an officer of the Company, and Jill Woodman personally contributed the aforementioned shares from their own holdings toward the foundation.

"We wake up every morning grateful for the opportunities life has given us," Nicholas and Jill expressed in a joint statement. "We hope to return the favor as best we can."

More information on the Jill + Nicholas Woodman Foundation will be released at a later date.