Apple CEO Tim Cook Sells More Than $35M in Stock

[Bako-MacAddict]

Better offload it now, before the news of the lackluster iPhone 7 is official

Exactly what came to mind.
[doublepost=1472334423][/doublepost]

Maybe he'll buy a bunch of iPhone 7s to bolster the sales numbers.

Thanks for the laugh !

 

[myrtlebee]

Maybe they should fix their **** quality control and lack of (or at least snail's pace of) innovation. Seems rather simple for a multibillion dollar company, no?

 

[SteveW928]

Steve jobs was a great manager and knew how to get the most out of people, but he wasn't responsible for every Apple product that was ever created.

Ahh, but that's the thing. People like Ive (note: don't forget how many of the core of some of Apple's best products aren't there anymore!) are specialists in their discipline, but might not make the best decisions or do their best work without the right kind of leadership in place. I mean, have you ever seen the entries and winners of some of the industrial design industry competitions?

There are countless times where companies have had the best and brightest in their disciplines, or even entire teams of them, where the company failed to do much of anything. If memory serves, some of them were visited by Jobs, who was able to build off the ideas and actually execute a great product or feature from them.

Or, look at competitors like Microsoft. I've heard they have an incredible amount of talent, yet they've never been able to really execute and produce something spectacular.

I have little doubt that Cook is an exceptional supply chain manager. He probably knows his Business 101 quite well, etc. But, that's not the same (and might actually be a detriment... unless you can unlearn some of the Business 101 stuff!) to being a visionary leader.

The other problem is that Apple is just WAY bigger now. And, I've yet to see big not start to equal stupid, when it comes to businesses and organizations. That's not so much Cooks fault, as something that's incredibly hard to counter, no matter who was in charge. If Jobs were still here, I'm guessing he'd be having some of Apple's current difficulties as well. (i.e.: some of the product teams seemingly being unaware of what the other teams are doing.)

Or maybe.. maybe it's because those kinds of technologies only happen once every thirty years or so. You want a major new technology shift when we just experienced one this past decade.

No, I totally get that. The *major* innovations only come along so often. But, Apple has been failing not only to innovate, but even just make good incremental changes lately. And, where they could, they instead decide to gimp products for marketing over UX reasons. That has nothing to do with leaps of innovation, it's a fundamental change in Apple's core principals.

And, the quality control on the software side has gone in the dumper. That's aside from the really poor decision making when they went Flat™. It seems like they saw what M$ (unsuccessfully) did with Windows and chucked their whole hard-learned-UI principal book out the window.

 

[RSMP99]

For all the people saying this is bad timing, to me it seems the sentence, "Tim Cook continues to hold more than 1.3 million shares of Apple stock following the sale, which is worth more than $140 million" is the more significant statement. If he were dumping/worried, he would be moving way more.

 

[Costino1]

Know he's planning on donating pretty much all his wealth during his lifetime.

Wonder how much he's donated thus far or doing it anonymously.

I don't see him as the type of guy to live in a 10 bedroom mansion and driving a Bentley.
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For all the people saying this is bad timing, to me it seems the sentence, "Tim Cook continues to hold more than 1.3 million shares of Apple stock following the sale, which is worth more than $140 million" is the more significant statement. If he were dumping/worried, he would be moving way more.

True. I doubt he even controls this stock. Im sure he has an accountant that moves this money around for tax purposes.

Im sure he lives off $XXX.00 and has bean counters do all the stock/tax work without him even knowing

 

[SteveW928]

For all the people saying this is bad timing, to me it seems the sentence, "Tim Cook continues to hold more than 1.3 million shares of Apple stock following the sale, which is worth more than $140 million" is the more significant statement. If he were dumping/worried, he would be moving way more.

Oh, I agree. I don't think this sale means anything other than he was exercising his options. That's a whole different discussion than whether he's a good CEO for Apple. 🙂

Know he's planning on donating pretty much all his wealth during his lifetime. ... Wonder how much he's donated thus far or doing it anonymously.

I guess that depends on what he's donating to. Some might argue that he's hurt the world with some of his choice so far, instead of improved things. I'd rather see him buy a mansion and Bentley than give to bad or questionable causes. You can donate money to feed starving kids, or you can donate money to your favorite political cause. All 'charity' is NOT equal!

 

[radiology]

...And the rich get richer.



I was just about to post similar thoughts. To those here who are talking down to people who think they smell something fishy going on, and who are acting like a (tautologically-named) "pre-planned" sale obviously must completely preclude any sort of foreknowledge of the company's future performance:

Do you really think a CEO making that kind of money is so clueless about his company and industry that he has no inkling how well his company might be doing in the next year or two? "No, Jony, don't show me what you have in store for the iPhone for the next few years, or project Titan — I have stock sales to plan." He also refuses to look at sales numbers and projections?

I'm not saying he is doing anything illegal. Perhaps all or some of this specific sale was in fact related to some requirement related to his fifth anniversary bonus. What I'm saying is that it is insulting to act like someone would be leading one of the world's richest companies and selling off millions of dollars of stocks, without reasonable knowledge about how his company's stock might be doing in the future.

You got it right bro. But some people in this forum are to naive to believe that. Just watch Sir Jonathan Paul "Jony" Ive do the same.

 

[C DM]

You got it right bro. But some people in this forum are to naive to believe that. Just watch Sir Jonathan Paul "Jony" Ive do the same.

There are definitely people playing the naive card, they are just not the ones you think you are referring to.

 

[imageWIS]

If you want to accuse Tim Cook of the crime of insider trading, why not just have the guts to do so, in just so many words. I'd strongly suspect C DM and bigjohn are correct, and these trades are scheduled far in advance by a financial advisor. Because Mr. Cook would have far too much to lose by commiting the crime you're not-quite-accusing him of. If you want to think he's evil, well, no amount of rational discussion is likely to dissuade you of that notion, but surely you don't think think Mr. Cook is foolish enough to engage in such an obvious and transparent crime (knowing full well that detractors would be looking for evidence of such).

Considering how Apple Store employees are treated and how Foxconn workers are treated, the man is a little bit evil.

 

[Wittysparrow]

For all the people saying this is bad timing, to me it seems the sentence, "Tim Cook continues to hold more than 1.3 million shares of Apple stock following the sale, which is worth more than $140 million" is the more significant statement. If he were dumping/worried, he would be moving way more.

This is just not how the stock market works.

The amount of stock Tim decided to offload would have been highly calculated.

It's almost impossible to sell the amount of stocks Tim has in a small space of time without consciousnesses.

If let's say Tim decided to sell half his stock or more. This would caused the stock price to plumit due oversupply. (Who's going to buy that much stock?). But it also investor confidence would be ruined. Investors would be asking hard questions as to why he didn't wait. When typically Apple shares tend to increase in value after a new iPhone is announced. Espically if they are planning on announcing a new MacBook Pro also.

Investors would panic, selling there own stocks also. Creating a domino affect and possibly ruining a company.

Overall this really indicates that he thinks now is when he'll get the best value for his stocks. Which is strange given the romoured upcoming announcements.

 

[Even Longer]

Rats are leaving the ship first...

 

[C DM]

This is just not how the stock market works.

The amount of stock Tim decided to offload would have been highly calculated.

It's almost impossible to sell the amount of stocks Tim has in a small space of time without consciousnesses.

If let's say Tim decided to sell half his stock or more. This would caused the stock price to plumit due oversupply. (Who's going to buy that much stock?). But it also investor confidence would be ruined. Investors would be asking hard questions as to why he didn't wait. When typically Apple shares tend to increase in value after a new iPhone is announced. Espically if they are planning on announcing a new MacBook Pro also.

Investors would panic, selling there own stocks also. Creating a domino affect and possibly ruining a company.

Overall this really indicates that he thinks now is when he'll get the best value for his stocks. Which is strange given the romoured upcoming announcements.

Except that sales like this are essentially planned and scheduled well ahead when no one really knows what the value of the stock will really be.

 

[SteveW928]

If let's say Tim decided to sell half his stock or more. This would caused the stock price to plumit due oversupply. (Who's going to buy that much stock?). But it also investor confidence would be ruined. Investors would be asking hard questions as to why he didn't wait. When typically Apple shares tend to increase in value after a new iPhone is announced. Espically if they are planning on announcing a new MacBook Pro also.

Investors would panic, selling there own stocks also. Creating a domino affect and possibly ruining a company.

And, that this would happen is more an indication of how fundamentally broken the stock markets are. 🙂 High-tech gambling vs investment.

 

[foodog]

Not quite. When did you last withdraw your life savings from an ATM?

He sold about 1/4 of his shares. Try reading the entire article.... He still holds over a million shares which at the rate the ~ 300k were sold would net ~137,000,000.

 

[AdonisSMU]

You guys realize that when a CEO, or any other insider, sells stock they can't just hit sell button, right? its illegal for CEOs to sell based on non-public information. So sales are typically done according to a trading plan filed well in advance with the SEC.

You'd have to be a complete idiot not to know this information. Good grief.

 

[Ghost31]

The timing of this sale has only to do with the anniversary of Mr. Cook's becoming CEO of Apple.

I won't get lost in the details of Mr. Cook's RSU awards dating back to when he was the CFO. But what he's typically done (pursuit to trading plans adopted well in advance) is sold shares that were for multi-year periods as soon as they vested. For several years now he's also had large blocks of shares vesting each year, those he typically holds.

So each year at this time, assuming Apple stock meets certain performance criteria, he gets 560,000 shares. A little more than 50% of those shares are withheld by Apple for tax purposes and the rest go into Mr. Cook's trust. But this year he got an additional 700,000 shares (as he will again in 2021, assuming he's still with the company). A little more than 50% of those were withheld for tax purposes as well, but the remaining shares were sold by Mr. Cook's trust. That was 334,000 shares that he sold of the 600,000 or so that he received after the tax withholding. The other 270,000 or so (representing what was left from the number of shares that vest annually) were kept.

What happened here is just business as usual for Mr. Cook. He keeps the shares that vest annually (on August 24th) and sells the shares that vest over longer periods of time - in this case, shares that vested five years after he became CEO. In 2014 he did the same thing with the great majority of the shares that had taken 4 years to vest and which he had been awarded when he was still CFO. He did the same thing in 2012 with vesting shares which he had been awarded about 3-1/2 years earlier. Both of those blocks of vesting RSUs were bigger than the block he sold this week.

So... he sold these shares on Thursday and Friday because he received them on Wednesday and because, going back several years, that is what he normally does when such RSUs vest.

After these transactions Mr. Cook's trust holds about 1.31 million shares. And he's set to receive another 3.5 million over the next 5 years.

It's so rare these days to ask a question and have someone give you exactly the answer you're looking for. Great freaking reply man. Standing ovation.

So really, it's just business as usual cashing out stock to get paid and is totally normal. And the timing really has no relevance to anything in the product pipeline. It's just another CEO getting paid. Hm. Does he even get paid an actual salary or is it all just stocks waiting to be cashed out?

I'm glad someone could explain this to me. When you're ignorant of the facts and you have these click bait headlines on websites about "being worried he's cashing out because the iPhone 7 is going to suck", you never know what to believe

 

[44267547]

It's so rare these days to ask a question and have someone give you exactly the answer you're looking for. Great freaking reply man. Standing ovation.

So really, it's just business as usual cashing out stock to get paid and is totally normal. And the timing really has no relevance to anything in the product pipeline. It's just another CEO getting paid. Hm. Does he even get paid an actual salary or is it all just stocks waiting to be cashed out?

I'm glad someone could explain this to me. When you're ignorant of the facts and you have these click bait headlines on websites about "being worried he's cashing out because the iPhone 7 is going to suck", you never know what to believe

Macrumors, yes, is known to produce 'Click Bait' articles in my Opinion. But to their defense, this a rumored website, therefore, the majority of all and any for that matter of their sources, cannot be validated unless specified with factual evidence. It's inevitable what your 'Clicking' on, being your choosing to open the article.

 

[Piggie]

Well, he can afford, well anything he desires I guess.

Other than good health and a long life.

 

[David210]

A lot of these types of things are often pre-planned sales that happen based on anniversary dates and/or dates associated with various stock/options awards, and really have nothing to do with anything essentially.

Or often enough not a sign of anything at all one way or another.

At his level, shares aren't sold on a whim (not implying that anyone here suggested that) or to make a large purchase. He has financial advisors that tell him when to liquidate stocks. It's based more on exercising rights and taking profits to offset tax liability than it does "buying a yacht". Just my opinion based on my years working with corporate America as an attorney/CPA.

 

[TT_Guy]

Indeed. It's called a Gerald Ratner moment.

Wow, don't know what the reasons are but really poor timing. In retail, timing is everything.

[doublepost=1472385960][/doublepost]Indeed. It's called a Gerald Ratner moment.

Wow, don't know what the reasons are but really poor timing. In retail, timing is everything.

 

[alexmarchuk]

Macrumors, yes, is known to produce 'Click Bait' articles in my Opinion. But to their defense, this a rumored website, therefore, the majority of all and any for that matter of their sources, cannot be validated unless specified with factual evidence. It's inevitable what your 'Clicking' on, being your choosing to open the article.

Maybe. But this article in particular is not click bait in my opinion. Stating he sold 35m of stock is factual.

 

[44267547]

Maybe. But this article in particular is not click bait in my opinion. Stating he sold 35m of stock is factual.

I never once said this article was click bait. The user I was quoting stated he was concerned 'You never know what your clicking on or what to believe on web sites.'

 

[maxsix]

Maybe they should fix their **** quality control and lack of (or at least snail's pace of) innovation. Seems rather simple for a multibillion dollar company, no?

Apple's lackluster quality is a symbol of their success. Too big to fail they've made a conscious decision to coast while engaging in some serious profit taking by not spending the money to deliver the world class quality they're capable of. They've got complete control over the mindset of their buyers, knowing exactly how little they can get away with, Apple's laughing all the way to the bank.

 

[MacBH928]

Looking at the outdated mac hardware, maybe he realizes that the Apple computer business will shutdown

 

[arkmannj]

A point to ponder.
If Tim were to sell his stocks now, and then Apple market tanks within a few months it would light up all kinds of alarms with regulators, Commissions, etc. for possible insider-trading. It is more likely that the shares vested for his anniversary and he simply wanted to liquify and diversify his personal investments.

The company I work for is doing quite well (and by all accounts should keep doing so int the foreseeable future) , and does 401k matching with company stock. Once the vesting time for those shares have come, most people I know diversify those into other shares/indexes/funds. Tim seems to be doing the same thing, he just has a lot more to do it with.

With that said, many analysts seem to think Apple is at their peak unless Apple can come out with some new/stronger product offerings to capture more/new markets. Even without any inside information Tim may figure Apple's stock may not have the up swing he wants in his personal investments for a couple years+ (for when new products can be released like: Apple Car, New Apple Watch,New Apple TV, Apple streaming services with original content, New Macs, etc...) Selling Apple stock doesn't necessarily mean he thinks Apple stock will go down, it could just mean he doesn't see it growing the way he wants his entire portfolio to in the near future.