I went back and looked at the historic stock prices, and as far as I can tell, the last time that ORCL closed at 1.69 (split adjusted) was in May 1994. If this is where the options came from, Henley sold options that were granted 8.5 years ago, and the shares have split 20.25 for 1 since then, so it was a grant of 50,000 shares that he sold. (The first time that I could find that ORCL closed at 1.69 was in December of 1993, which would make the options even older, but there were no splits between these two dates.)
Admittedly this is a healthy option grant, but it doesn't seem absurd to me that the CFO of a company should get 50K shares. And given that the options will expire in a year and a half, and the market is very jumpy right now, I wouldn't blame him for wanting to sell assuming that things look okay. In other words, if he has reason to believe that ORCL will go up over the next couple of months assuming no major natural disasters, etc., this would be a prudent time to get his money. |
