Founder and CEO John Schnatter and the three other senior officers sold the shares over the past week for prices between around $76 and $77 a share, according to new Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
The trades came just as Papa John’s hit a record high of $78.09, pushing the value of Schnatter’s 10.5 million shares above $800 million for the first time.
PZZA closed this afternoon at for $75.15, up 65 cents.
Ritchie
So-called insider stock sales are an important barometer of where top executives at companies think share prices are headed. But they’re an imperfect measure. Sometimes, executives sell through what’s called SEC Rule 10b5-1 plans. They allow major holders to sell a predetermined number of shares at a predetermined time, a plan often approved in advance by the board of directors to avoid insider-trading accusations.
The Papa John’s filings don’t disclose any reason for the sales, however.
YUM: Two activist groups filed a shareholder proposal today requesting that fast-food giant Yum quickly phase out harmful antibiotic use in its meat supply, taking particular aim at the KFC unit’s nearly 15,000 restaurants, according to Reuters. The request from the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and As You Sow of Oakland, Calif., say KFC lags rivals McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Subway and Wendy’s in setting policies to curb routine use of antibiotics in chicken production.
In a statement issued after reports of the shareholder proposal, KFC said its “position on antibiotics is currently being reviewed to determine the viability for our suppliers to go beyond the FDA guidelines for antibiotic usage,” according to The Courier-Journal.
Yum’s 6,500-Taco Bell chain has agreed to stop using antibiotics for humans in its chicken supply early next year. The 14,000-unit Pizza Hut division has made a similar promise for pizza topping chicken. But KFC, which buys far more chicken than the other two brands, hasn’t budged (Reuters and Courier-Journal). Buy a boxing nun hand puppet at eBay for just $35.99 (auction listing).
Satterthwaite
BROWN-FORMAN named Marc Satterthwaite as new managing director for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, taking over from Michael McShane, who’s retiring Oct. 31 after 17 years with the company. Satterthwaite has held several leadership positions, including division director for the U.S. central states and Canada, director of North America Region sales operations, and as the interim country manager for India. Most recently, he’s been chief of staff to the U.S. commercial director (The Shout).
TEXAS ROADHOUSE competitor Logan’s Roadhouse — founded in Lexington in 1991 — has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware. The Nashville-based steakhouse chain said Monday in its petition that it will close 18 under-performing restaurants; it has 250 overall. Logan’s was easily confused with Louisville-based Texas Roadhouse because of their similar formats, including encouraging patrons eat buckets of free peanuts and drop the shells on the floor (Lexington Herald-Leader). Texas Roadhouse shares recently traded for $45.48, up 1.3%, or 59 cents.
Bezos
AMAZON founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sold one million of his company shares last week, raising $757 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. That’s a record for Bezos, exceeding the $671 million he sold in May (Fortune). Amazon’s stock closed yesterday at $766.56, near its all-time high of $770.50 (Google Finance). Say yes to this dress: The retailer’s best-selling wedding gown is gorgeous and a bargain to boot: as little as $16, a steal when the average bridal dress costs $1,357 (Refinery 29). Amazon employs 6,000 workers at distribution centers in Jeffersonville and Shephardsville; more about its local operations.
GE: Twisting the knife in the back of all the cities that didn’t land GE’s new headquarters, the conglomerate has unveiled renderings of its planned, new, high-tech 2.4-acre corporate campus in Boston. The design shows a 12-story building with a giant, sail-like veil and GE logo on top. The former owner of GE Appliances is moving from Fairfield, Conn., its corporate home since 1974 (Boston Globe and Seattle Times).
New GE headquarters includes two century-old brick warehouses.
GE sold GE Appliances to Haier for $5.6 billion in June. The maker of refrigerators, dish washers and other “white goods” employs 6,000 workers in Louisville’s Appliance Park.
This afternoon, Papa John’s stock soared to a new record closing high of $77.38 a share, up 4.6%, or $3.37, on a better-than-expected second-quarter report. That’s good news for all shareholders (except for the shorts, of course!) — but none more so than founder and CEO John Schnatter. He’s the pizza chain’s single-biggest stockholder, with 10,455,981 shares — 27.6% of all, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
Papa John’s shares have staged a huge comeback since hitting a 52-week closing low of $45.50 on Feb. 3. Here’s the value of Schnatter’s stake that day compared to its rising value the day after each of the past three quarterly earnings reports:
$475,747,136
Feb. 3
$623,176,468
Feb. 23
$629,031,817
May 3
$809,083,810
Today
Schnatter, 54, founded Papa John’s in 1984, right after graduating from Ball State University with a business degree. More than 30 years later, it’s now a fast-food goliath with 4,700 restaurants worldwide — including more than 1,200 international ones in 37 countries and territories. It has 750 employees in Louisville, and another 21,000 across the globe. The company went public in 1993. More about Papa John’s.
In Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed today, both executives sold at $12.26 a share:
Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Breier, 4,905 shares shares for $60,135. Shares beneficially owned after the trade: 678,452
Chief People Officer Stephen Cunanan, 3,511 shares for $43,045. Beneficially owned after: 83,527.
Kindred’s stock closed this afternoon at $11.67 a share, down 4.8%, or 59 cents. The Louisville-based hospital and nursing giant employs 2,200 workers in the city, and 102,000 across the nation. More about Kindred.
She received the shares in the form of SARs — or stock appreciation rights — under the executive compensation plan, for the equivalent of $38.43 each, or a total $581,000. So, her pre-tax net was about $919,000.
BROWN-FORMAN: Retiring Director James Welch sold — sort of — 1,741 class A shares on Thursday at $105.17 each for a total $183,000, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In fact, the SEC Form 4 says, Welch surrendered the shares “to satisfy withholding obligations associated with the vesting of restricted stock upon [his] retirement” (SEC document).
PAPA JOHN’S and PIZZA HUT: A former executive at the maker of FarmVille online games has started a pizza restaurant in the heart of Silicon Valley where he hopes all pies will someday be made by robots. The process at Zume Pizza in California’s Mountain View involves two robots — named Marta and Bruno — that spread sauce “perfectly but not too perfectly, so it looks just like an artisan product,” says owner Alex Garden. The robots then move the pizza into an 850-degree oven to pre-bake. From there, the pizza is given a final bake in a bank of ovens inside the delivery truck on its way to a customer’s door. Traditional humans are still required for tasks like sprinkling cheese and driving the truck, however (Grub Street).
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