Tim Cook sells off another $29M in Apple stock

One week after receiving a windfall of restricted stock units — and cashing in a chunk for a $35.8 million payday — Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday sold another batch of his sizable stock cache worth nearly $29 million.

Cook gained more than $28.7 million from 269,883 owned Apple shares, sold in a series of trades at prices ranging from weighted averages of $105.95 to $107.37, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Wednesday.

The selloff comes less than a week after Cook marked five years of success as Apple's chief executive officer, a feat that earned him 1.26 million RSUs — 980,000 time-based RSUs and 280,000 performance-based RSUs — per a compensation package dating back to 2011. When Cook took over for late cofounder Steve Jobs, the board granted him 4.7 million restricted shares set to vest based on tenure and performance.

While other top Apple executives routinely cash in their vested shares, Cook has until now stockpiled his awards, presumably living off a base salary that in 2015 was bumped to $2 million.

After this week's trades, Cook's trust holds 1,039,809 Apple shares worth about $110 million at the end of trading on Wednesday. Another batch of 700,000 RSUs is scheduled to vest on Aug. 24, 2021, while five 280,000-unit performance-based RSU packages are set to vest in annual installments through 2021.

25 Comments

red oak 1104 comments · 13 Years

About 8 years ago

Would have been great if he announced instead: "I'm holding onto all my shares. I believe the stock is grossly undervalued"

Instead of the usual corporate bullshit about "pre-scheduled selling of stock" and diversification

Why sell when the stock is at PE of 12? How does one, as CEO, defend that? Do you need the cash?

robin huber 4025 comments · 22 Years

How can his trust hold over a million shares and they are only worth a million dollars when they are trading at over one hundred per share? What am I missing here?

zoetmb 2655 comments · 17 Years

red oak said:

Would have been great if he announced instead: "I'm holding onto all my shares. I believe the stock is grossly undervalued"

Instead of the usual corporate bullshit about "pre-scheduled selling of stock" and diversification

Why sell when the stock is at PE of 12? How does one, as CEO, defend that? Do you need the cash?

That is the big question. Is he selling because he's buying some massive estate, yacht or plane and doesn't want to take on debt to do it?
Is he selling because he wants to make a big charitable contribution somewhere?
Or is he selling because he thinks he can get a better return by investing elsewhere (or simply wants to be more diversified?)
But we'll never know the answer unless he makes an obvious large investment that becomes public knowledge.

The fact that he's selling implies to me that he doesn't think the Apple Car (or anything else) is going to drive fast growth of the stock price in the short to medium term. In fact, it could imply that he knows that there's nothing revolutionary in the pipeline and that there isn't going to be any growth.

trashman69 161 comments · 9 Years

red oak said:

Would have been great if he announced instead: "I'm holding onto all my shares. I believe the stock is grossly undervalued"

Instead of the usual corporate bullshit about "pre-scheduled selling of stock" and diversification

Why sell when the stock is at PE of 12? How does one, as CEO, defend that? Do you need the cash?

Or "I am holding on to my shares - AND BUYING MORE SHARES. I am doing this because the next iPhone isn't a snoozer AND we are finally fixing all of the neglected products and software issues that have pissed off customers for the past 8 years"