The article below was just posted but I also saw a form 144 filed for John selling 1,180,377 shares for $4,426,263 dated 2/22/01. What's the message here?
InfoSpace rises after founder increases stake
Fri Feb 23 20:21:05 2001 GMT
SEATTLE, Feb 23 (Reuters) - InfoSpace Inc. , whose stock has fallen 97 percent in the past 11 months, rose 20 percent on Friday after it revealed its founder had boosted his holdings in the company, which provides content and services to Web sites and wireless networks.
The Bellevue, Wash.-based company said founder and Chief Executive Naveen Jain had bought 500,000 shares of InfoSpace stock on Feb. 15, boosting his total holdings in the company to 62 million shares.
That followed the purchase of 2 million shares by Jain and his wife last December, after they exercised stock options at a price of $5.81 and below, the company said.
InfoSpace shares, which have tumbled from a high of $138-1/2 last March, rose 11/16, or 20 percent, to $4-1/16 in late afternoon trading on the Nasdaq market.
News of the purchases comes amid shaken investor confidence in the company, which has been forced to cut staff and scale back growth forecasts amid the slowing U.S. economy and some difficulties in integrating Go2Net, which it bought last year for $1.5 billion.
The stock was also knocked by the departure last month of the company's relatively new CEO, Arun Sarin, who was expected to lead InfoSpace's charge into the fast-growing wireless market. Its chief financial officer and chief operating officer also left.
Insider trading filings over the past year show Jain last sold InfoSpace stock in June, when he sold a total of 1.28 million shares for $66.6 million. In May, he sold 220,000 shares for $15.1 million.
With about 315 million outstanding shares of InfoSpace, Jain's stake amounts to about 19.7 percent. |
