Reddit CEO Steve Huffman sold 500,000 shares … at an average $32.30 price, receiving $16.15 million.
CFO Vollero Andrew sold 71,765 Reddit shares for $2.318 million.
Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Wong sold 514,000 shares for $16.602 million.
Chief Technology Officer Christopher Slowe sold 185,000 shares for $5.975 million.
Chief Accounting Officer Michelle Reynolds sold 3,033 RDDT shares for $97,966.
Board member David Habiger sold 3,000 shares for $102,000.
All told, that’s $41.245 million worth of Reddit shares sold.
I knew they were going to sell as soon as they could, but damn. As someone who knows the bare basics of how it all works but does NOT actually follow the stock market, the last time I saw that kind of executive dumping was Enron just before it went under, lol.
Can someone who actually follows the markets tell me whether all the social media/tech IPO C-suites do that these days, or is this genuinely unusual? Because honestly I find the sales a bit shocking in both rapidity and amount, even for as greedy and openly corrupt as the Reddit board has been over the last few years.
EDITED TO ADD: Apparently this is not so unusual. Many thanks to those who took the time to answer.
From my experience, these people have lots more shares than what they sold. And aside from spez, it’s not really that much.
If I am not mistaken, these sales are also planned and public knowledge before the sales are executed. The key shareholders should know executives are going to dump stock.
But yes. This seems normal to me.
One thing of note is the average price spez sold for. That is actually below market value so it’s likely that his sale price was fixed, which I believe is a thing.
Yes. Insiders with that high a fraction of ownership exercise the ability to sell shares at a predetermined percentage value of a full priced share. Usually pegged to the closing price at the beginning or end of a quarter, whichever is lower.
Some of these people have been with Reddit since the very beginning and this is basically their first practical chance to sell any of their shares - I wouldn’t read too much into their activity this week. For a company valued at $9B, having the founder & other executives only sell $41M in the week of the IPO if anything feels like the opposite of dumping.
So the IPO was Thursday; on Monday:
I knew they were going to sell as soon as they could, but damn. As someone who knows the bare basics of how it all works but does NOT actually follow the stock market, the last time I saw that kind of executive dumping was Enron just before it went under, lol.
Can someone who actually follows the markets tell me whether all the social media/tech IPO C-suites do that these days, or is this genuinely unusual? Because honestly I find the sales a bit shocking in both rapidity and amount, even for as greedy and openly corrupt as the Reddit board has been over the last few years.
EDITED TO ADD: Apparently this is not so unusual. Many thanks to those who took the time to answer.
From my experience, these people have lots more shares than what they sold. And aside from spez, it’s not really that much.
If I am not mistaken, these sales are also planned and public knowledge before the sales are executed. The key shareholders should know executives are going to dump stock.
But yes. This seems normal to me.
One thing of note is the average price spez sold for. That is actually below market value so it’s likely that his sale price was fixed, which I believe is a thing.
Yes. Insiders with that high a fraction of ownership exercise the ability to sell shares at a predetermined percentage value of a full priced share. Usually pegged to the closing price at the beginning or end of a quarter, whichever is lower.
Some of these people have been with Reddit since the very beginning and this is basically their first practical chance to sell any of their shares - I wouldn’t read too much into their activity this week. For a company valued at $9B, having the founder & other executives only sell $41M in the week of the IPO if anything feels like the opposite of dumping.