It seems Papa John’s founder and CEO John Schnatter can hardly sell shares fast enough. Moments ago, he notified the Securities and Exchange Commission that he’d sold 22,261 shares at $76 each, for a total $1.7 million.
That’s the same per-share price he got Tuesday and Monday, when he sold 11,500 for $873,000 — trades we reported just this morning. And those all followed the 24,322 shares he unloaded the first week of the month, when three other top executives went to market as well, all at prices between $76 and $77 a share.
Schnatter
Insider sales like these are always noteworthy because they could mean the top brass thinks share prices have plateaued, or are headed lower. On the other hand, such trades could simply involve selling to raise cash or diversify investment portfolios.
Whatever the case, Papa John’s PZZA closed today at $75.34 a share That’s well below the record $78.09 trading high on Aug. 3. And as we pointed out this morning, Schnatter, 54, still holds the single-biggest stake in the company he launched in 1984: 10 million shares worth $753 million. With options, the figure rises to nearly $800 million.
PAPA JOHN’S founder and CEO John Schnatter sold 11,500 shares this week at $76 each for a total $873,000, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing yesterday.
To put Schnatter’s $873,000 profit in perspective, consider this: His pizza chain is running a help-wanted Craigslist ad in the Louisville area right now for delivery drivers, promising as much as $20 an hour, with tips. At that rate, a driver would need to work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, for 21 years to make what Schattner, 54, earned with a few keyboard strokes this week.
And he still owns a lot more stock. The trades were made Monday and Tuesday, and left him with a still-huge stake: 10 million shares worth $758 million at yesterday’s closing PZZA price of $75.80. With options, the figure rises another $40 million.
HUMANA declared a regular quarterly dividend of 29 cents a share payable on Oct. 28 to stockholders of record Oct.13 (press release).
Capetillo
TACO BELL: In San Jose, Calif., last night dozens of mourners remembered Dulce Capetillo, the pregnant 18-year-old Taco Bell employee killed in a car crash last week on the way to picking up her husband, who worked for the fast-food chain during the late shift at another outlet. Doctors saved their infant son, Christopher; he’s now eating from a bottle and no longer tethered to medical equipment. By yesterday, nearly $17,000 had been raised to cover Capetillo’s funeral costs and Christopher’s medical bills, with Taco Bell contributing toward the total (Mercury News). In Louisville, the fast-Mexican chain delivered free lunch yesterday to Louisville Metro Police headquarters as it made amends for an embarrassing incident last week, where employees at a Taco Bell on Preston Highway near Phillips Lane initially balked at serving five LMPD officers (WDRB).
UPS will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking for its previously announced $310 million expansion of the company’s giant shipping hub at Louisville International Airport; the project is expected to add 300 jobs over the next 18 months to the 22,000 already there (Courier-Journal). UPS is the city’s single-biggest private employer; more about the shipper’s local operations.
BROWN-FORMAN turned to automation in an expansion of its Jack Daniel’s distillery operations in Lynchburg, Tenn., according to a new and very wonky account in a trade publication (Automation World).
An overhead photo of the 2017 GT; Ford will produce them for four years.Taylor
TEXAS ROADHOUSE founder and CEO Kent Taylor sold $6.9 million of company stock at a hair more than $46 a share Tuesday through yesterday, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Taylor still owns 4.2 million shares worth $192 million at TXRH shares‘ closing price this afternoon of $45.47.
TACO BELL: In San Jose, Calif., a one-day-old baby boy was in critical condition at a South Bay hospital early this morning, after his 18-year-old mother died in a car accident Wednesday. Both the victim, Dulce Capetillo, and the infant’s father, her fiancé Pedro Cortes, were Taco Bell employees working the late shift. Capetillo’s brother was driving her to pick up Cortes at the Taco Bell where he worked. “I just can’t imagine the pain he is going through right now,” said Taco Bell area supervisor Jose Gonzalez. South Bay Taco Bells now have donation boxes in honor of Dulce; the company plans to match customer donations. And a GoFundMe page is also in place to help with funeral costs (ABC 7).
In Toledo, Ohio, a sheriff’s deputy has been fired after making what were considered inappropriate Facebook posts about Taco Bell employees he said had made vulgar remarks about him.
Deputy Thomas Hillenbrand, 57, a 19-year employee, was canned Wednesday. His Facebook post July 23 said a black employee and a co-worker inside the restaurant yelled “Black lives matter,” and laughed at him while he was in his car in the drive-thru. The deputy was in uniform at the time.
The trades were all on Monday, according to a series of Securities and Exchange Commission filings this afternoon, after stock markets closed. They were:
But their sales were dwarfed by the 1 million shares founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sold Aug. 2 for $757 million, his SEC filing showed. That brought to $1.4 billion his total sales in the past three months, according to GeekWire. But he still owned 80.9 million shares after that big trade, worth $62 billion.
Bezos
Bezos’s SEC filing said the most recent sale was made under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which allows company insiders to sell a predetermined amount of stock at a set time, to avoid the appearance of insider trading.
The retailer’s AMZN shares closed today at $764.63, up 59 cents. The three executives sold for prices ranging from $768 to $771.
Jason Zachariah received 20,000 Kindred shares yesterday as the hospital and nursing home giant announced his promotion to president of Kindred Rehabilitation Services, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission notice this morning.
The shares are in the form of restricted stock units that vest in equal annual installments over three years starting a year from yesterday. Based on yesterday’s $11.01 closing price, the shares are worth $220,000. Zachariah already owned 20,980. It’s common for executives to get bonuses for big promotions. By vesting the shares over several years, a company encourages the employee to stay and also ties their compensation to the company’s overall performance.
Zachariah replaced Jon Rousseau, who is leaving the company to pursue other interests, Kindred said. Rousseau joined Kindred three years ago and was president of KRS since April 2015.
In a separate filing, Rousseau told the SEC he’d given up 24,900 shares without compensation, a stake he presumably walked away from when he quit; the Form 4 document didn’t explain the transaction, however. Rousseau still had 24,433 shares remaining, the document said.*
Zachariah’s elevation and Rousseau’s departure were effective immediately, the company said. Zachariah started at the Louisville hospital and nursing home giant in 2006.
Kindred employs about 2,200 employees in Louisville; it has about 102,000 employees in total. More about Kindred’s operations.
* (At the time he joined the company, Rousseau told the SEC he’d been awarded 35,000 restricted stock units, which were to vest in equal annual installments over three years by July 30 this year — two weeks ago. Attentive readers will notice a discrepancy in all these figures for Rousseau. Without getting too far into the weeds and boring readers to death, Boulevard notes Rousseau also was awarded 14,000 RSUs when he was promoted to rehab president in spring 2015.)
Steve Ritchie made the trade Aug. 12 with options he exercised that day at a so-called strike price of $26 a share, according to a just-filed Securities and Exchange Commission document. That means he netted about $625,000 after selling the 12,836 shares at prices ranging from $74.37 to $75.08.
Ritchie
The options vest in three equal annual installments beginning one year from the grant date of Feb. 28, 2013. The company’s PZZA shares closed today at $75, up 35 cents.
Ritchie has been the pizza chain’s president and chief operating officer since July 2015. He started at the company as a customer service representative making $5 an hour in 1996.
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