by , 4:00 PM EDT, April 12th, 2001
First Call has published its latest insider trading information for Apple today. The only insider selling in 2001 has actually come from a former employee, retired VP Mitch Mandich. Mr. Mandich officially retired when Apple announced the company had seen a major decrease in sales during the beginning of the December quarter (Apple's 1st fiscal quarter). The consensus since that announcement is that Mr. Mandich was ousted from his position, though Apple has been playing it straight.
Mr. Mandich has apparently decided that he would rather rid himself of the last vestiges of his Apple past and has sold 275,556 shares of Apple stock. Most of those shares sold in March of 2001, which 30,100 shares were sold on February 1st. Most of the shares were acquired through exercising options in the range of US$6.56 to US$6.78 per share and were all sold in the low US$20 range. The 30,100 shares sold in February were acquired through exercising options at US$4.16 per share, and were also sold for a bit more than US$20 per share. Mr. Mandich filed for the sale (Form 144) on January 25, 2001. The sale of the stock brought in net proceeds of US$3,940,944 (meaning that Mr. Mandich cleared that much money after the price of the options was taken into consideration).
In March, some- 245,456 shares were sold. In February, 30,1000 shares were sold. The proposed sale was registered with the SEC on January 25, 2001 for 275,556 shares.
There was no other insider buying or selling so far this year. You can see all the recent insider trading information at the First Call report on Yahoo!
On the other hand, maybe Mr. Mandich had a car payment due.
It is very notable that no other Apple execs have been selling stock. Insider selling information is used by many analysts to gauge the confidence and mood from company execs, and is often considered to be a barometer of things to come. Mr. Mandich is not the only Apple exec to own options at a price point that would allow them to profit from a sale now. By extension, this would suggest that Apple's leadership is confident of their direction and efforts to weather the PC slowdown. Time will tell, of course.