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.
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.
UPS just reported second-quarter results that were in line with Wall Street’s forecasts. The shipper — Louisville’s single-biggest private employer — reported net income of $1.27 billion, or $1.43 a share, up from $1.23 billion, or $1.35 a share, in the year-earlier period. The FactSet consensus of analysts was for earnings per share of $1.43.
Revenue was $14.6 billion, up from $14.1 billion in the year-earlier period and in line with the FactSet consensus of $14.6 billion. The shipper reiterated its full year EPS guidance of $5.70 to $5.90, compared to the FactSet consensus of $5.80 (MarketWatch and press release). UPS shares closed at $108.10, down 63 cents. The company employs 22,000 workers at the Worldport hub at Louisville International Airport — the biggest fully automated package handling facility in the world.
Schnatter
PAPA JOHN’S late yesterday boosted its quarterly dividend by a whopping 14%. The new 20-cents-a-share payout, up from 17.5 cents a share, will be paid Aug. 19 to shareholders of record as of Aug. 8 (press release). The pizza giant’s shares closed today at $73.95, up 30 cents. On an annual basis, the 10 cents-per-share hike is worth another $1,045,598 to founder and CEO John Schnatter. His 10,455,981 shares — the most owned by anyone — are now worth $770 million. Shareholders proxy report lists all major holders.
KFC: In the U.K. and Ireland only today, fast-chicken giant KFC today will give away a year’s supply of hot chicken wings to one very lucky winner and their best mate in a promotion celebrating National Chicken Wing Day. “All you need to do is follow KFC on Twitter and then tell them why your best mate is, well, the best, using the hashtag #WingmanOfTheYear” (Metro). But don’t hesitate: You must enter by midnight tonight U.K. time, which is six hours ahead of Eastern Time.
TACO BELL: The world’s media outlets are now devoting wall-to-wall news coverage to Taco Bell’s new Cheetos-stuffed burritos debuting in the middle of August in Cincinnati. Behold the $1 sandwich in all its orange glory:
Tightening his grip on the University of Louisville, Gov. Matt Bevin today added 10 more members to his reconfigured board of trustees, appointing a slew of business heavy hitters, including at least one with long family ties to the board.
Among them: Papa John’s founder and CEO John Schnatter; Glenview Trust Co. founder and chairman David Grissom, who’s also a retired Humana executive; and Brown-Forman heiress Sandra Frazier.
Schnatter is a major UofL booster, donating millions for naming rights to Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium. He and conservative industrialist Charles Koch donated $6.3 million to the school in March 2015 to establish an on-campus center to study the virtues of free enterprise; responding to criticism, the university said the money wouldn’t curtail academic freedom.
Frazier
Frazier, who is now cycling off the Brown-Forman board of directors, also is a director of Glenview Trust, a boutique investment firm that serves more than 500 of the area’s wealthiest families. Her late father, Harry Frazier, is a former UofL vice chairman, and her uncle, the late Owsley Brown Frazier, was once chairman.
Bevin’s announcement today follows his surprise June 17 dismissal of the previous 20-seat board, which he called “dysfunctional” in its oversight of the university and President James Ramsey. He replaced them with an interim three-member board, which he filled out with today’s appointments. The school has been roiled with controversy over Ramsey’s seven-figure compensation; a sex scandal involving the marquee men’s basketball program, plus other administrative missteps. Ramsey offered to resign when Bevin dissolved the board, but a final decision on his future was deferred to the next board.
Those 10 companies tracked by Boulevard joined U.S. stocks clawing their way back from two consecutive days of steep losses, following Britain’s stunning vote last week to quit the European Union. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed moments ago at 17,410 — up 1.6%; the broader S&P 500 index jumped 1.8% to 2,036 points, and the Nasdaq climbed 2.1% to 4692.
Today’s Guardian.
“This is going to take a long time to play out and I think the initial shock is being a little reversed right now,” Doug Cote, chief market strategist at Voya Investment Management told CNBC. “This is not 2008. It’s more like 2011.” (Read the latest Brexit developments in Britain’s Guardian.)
In Louisville, virtually all of Boulevard’s top 10 rose by the time markets closed at 4 p.m. They included Kindred, which got pounded yesterday, falling 7%. The closing prices:
Those gains came even as Ford said itexpects the double-whammy of any softer post-Brexit industry and a weaker British sterling “would have an adverse impact on our operations in the long term,” a Ford spokesman told financial news site The Street. Ford also said it would issue revised 2016 guidance during its second-quarter earnings call July 28 (The Street). Ford shares have now tumbled nearly 8% since Britain’s surprise vote to leave the European Union — nearly twice as much as the broader S&P 500 index.
In its most recent annual report, in February, Ford warned about the impact of a possible Brexit, saying it “could cause financial and capital markets within and outside Europe to constrict, thereby negatively impacting our ability to finance our business, and also could cause a substantial dip in consumer confidence and spending that could negatively impact sales of vehicles.”
Last year, the U.K. was Ford’s single-biggest market after the U.S., accounting for 8% of the automaker’s $149.6 billion in sales:
Ball State University is the latest school to defend another multimillion-dollar gift from one of its most famous graduates, Papa John’s founder John Schnatter, to establish an institute promoting the virtues of free enterprise.
Boulevard 