Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night’s hugely controversial announcement it will soon charge developers when one of their games is downloaded.
The company has subsequently softened its stance slightly on a couple of aspects - but fury across the industry remains.
Behind the scenes, CEO John Riccitiello shifted 2000 shares last week on 6th September, as noted by Yahoo Finance, which noted this move was part of a trend over the past year where the exec has sold more than 50,000 shares in total and bought none.
It’s almost like they knew it was a shitty decision…
Selling 2000 shares while retaining over 3000000 shares seems to indicate that this is for quarterly tax payments, which are due this week.
I’m not defending any actions of Unity.
The author / headline writer are being disingenuous or just clickbait chasing.
The information in the article is from here:
Having the scumbag of a CEO in the headline may have been a mistake. Riccitiello sold the least shares in the recent transaction history of the company. Also, I don’t know where you get your "retaining over 3000000 shares’ from. The source says Riccitiello sold all his shares in his possession.
The article mentions two others:
Tomer Bar-Zeev who sold 37.5k shares on 1st September, for around $1.4m. Shlomo Dovrat, meanwhile, sold 68k shares on 30th August for around $2.5m.
Bar-Zeev sold 37500 shares of ~1300000 owned on automated sell. That’s a factor of ten and a fair bit away from 2k sold from 3 mil, but that might be normal. It was automated, after all.
Dovrat’s transaction is mostly the same, roughly double the shares sold and roughly double the shares owned. However, it was not automated.
I believe the article mentioned them because they sold the most, but they clearly weren’t taking the amount retained into account. The third most sold, however, by Robynne Sisco was a sell of 25768, retaining 14700 (sold ~64%).
There are a fair number of other sells, but if the Bar-Zeev and Dovrat sells don’t look suspicious, nothing else will stand out.
What does seem a little odd- and I have no idea if this is at all unusual- is that in the last twelve months, more shares have been bought than sold (net shares almost 10,000,000), and in the last 3 months more shares have been sold than bought (net shares almost 3,500,000). In the last 3 months, the number of insider traders is a little over 1/3 of the amount of insider trades over the last 12 months (under the assumption it should be about 1/4). All of the insider buys seem to be the options granted for working for Unity. I assume it isn’t too odd for the board of directors to sell and never buy, but they have increased selling a fair bit in the last 3 months, and it seems specifically the last two weeks.
It is right in the SEC filling which anyone can look up. The 2000 shares sold were by the CEOs wife, which is why they are marked as indirect.
$80k is rich people walking around money when compared to ~$100 million. It was part of an automated selling plan and not suspicious in any way.
There’s an old Peter Lynch quote about many reasons to sell but only one to buy.
More confusing accounting that I’ve never learned, and probably never will.
At first I thought it was because of direct/indirect ownership. But what is the point of “5. Amount of Securities Beneficially Owned Following Reported Transaction(s) (Instr. 3 and 4)” being 3mil with no transaction, but the 2000 stock transaction showing they owned none? I see nothing on the form or in the definition showing that direct or indirect ownership show be reported differently. They are all owned by the ‘reporting person’. But clearly this is all me just not being able to read how they filled it out.
I agree $80k is nothing to $100mil, I do believe that if they have 3mil of securities, then it doesn’t matter, no matter how high or low the securities are worth. I disagree with the idea that automation makes it not suspicious, though. If the stocks were all automatically sold off, then the company devalues itself afterwards, it has the same intent and outcome as any other insider trading.
quarterly tax payments, which are due this week.
Uhh… Q2 was Jul 31, and Q3 is Oct 31… At least according to my calendar.
Are you sure?
SEC has entered the chat
“Oh no! Not the eyebrow raise! We’ll never do it again! We promise!”
First thought: If this was done on purpose, don’t these people know how many bigwigs get caught. Like, all the time. Even martha stewart got caught. Jeeze.
Why would they think they would special? One would think they would give it up at this point.
Second thoughts: if CEOs, etc, keep this up, it makes me wonder how many people get away with it all the time, for them to take a chance like that.
Third thought: they really think the consequences for insider trading are less problematic to them than facing jail, and paying a fine up to, what, 3 times the amount they made? That makes no sense. Back to the second thought, I guess.
They keep doing it because they know they’ll probably get away with it, and if they get caught they’ll get a slap on the wrist. Martha Stewart went to jail for perjury, not insider trading. If she hadn’t lied she probably would have just paid a fine instead of going to jail.
