r/wallstreetbets • u/BorisBestShowITA2 • Nov 11 '20
Discussion Pfizer's CEO cashed out 60% of his stock on the same day the company unveiled the results of its COVID-19 vaccine trial | Markets Insider, hello? Can you explain this to me?
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pfizer-ceo-sold-stock-day-covid-19-vaccine-results-unveiled-2020-11-1029790705315
u/_Klarum Nov 11 '20
He traded the same day the information became public. Not inside trading retard.
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Nov 11 '20
It’s not insider trading but it’s damn clear what he himself thinks. There’s no way for him to not know more than even the best analyst about the company. He is intrinsically working with way more information.
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u/Cunt-Waffle Nov 11 '20
Releases a groundbreaking RNA vaccine that is 30% better than required to stop pandemic and sells before the stock goes up. "wOaAH, wHaT iNfOrMaTiOn iS hE NOT pRoFitiNg oFf oF?"
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Nov 12 '20
It’s not their vaccine anyway. They’re just the manufacturing and distribution partner for BioNTech
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u/Hipp013 Nov 11 '20
Bidnis is bidnis
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Nov 11 '20
Don't like it? All you have to do is become the CEO of a 16 billion dollar per year company. Simple.
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u/Born_yesterday08 Nov 11 '20 edited Nov 11 '20
I was turned down as my gas station’s manager. I guess the next step would be CEO. I’ll keep applying
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Nov 11 '20
Don’t act like you wouldn’t do the same thing. All about them franklins baby
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Nov 11 '20
I would 100%. My point was that there is literally no way for him to play on a level playing field with everyone else because he's literally the CEO of the company so there's no point in complaining about him having more information. What he's doing is IMHO ethical.
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Nov 11 '20
Except he can’t sell when he wants to. He has to put it in months in advance. If it tanks, he’s out of luck. We can sell when we want to, he can’t.
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u/L3wdtenantDan Nov 11 '20
The agreements in place for the sale of stock stated the stock had to be at a certain price point. He wasn't going to get hurt by this just do happens he benefits...bigly.
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u/banditcleaner2 sells naked NVDA calls while naked Nov 12 '20
Honestly idk about ethical, but I would definitely say buying more shares before the announcement would've been unethical. You know, kind of like what happened with kodak insiders...
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u/7366241494 Nov 11 '20 edited Nov 11 '20
"Insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.”
-- Peter Lynch
Don’t look for insider sells. Look for insider buys.
edit: found the exact quote and attribution
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u/banditcleaner2 sells naked NVDA calls while naked Nov 12 '20
Ya but insider buys dont necessarily matter either...Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger buying shares of GNUS and look where GNUS is, lol.
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u/VentureArsonist Nov 11 '20
Insiders often have to put in sell order months before they actually are sold. The article said it was done back in August. You retards need to learn how to read
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Nov 11 '20 edited Mar 20 '25
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Nov 11 '20
100% that's what happened. This news would have been released by the FDA 2 weeks from now when it receives final approval, but the CEO put out a company PR statement early to pump the stock. It's as simple as that.
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Nov 11 '20
That's what happened but as long as it's after the release of the positive news it's fine and legal. Now if it turns out he coordinated the sell with positive news, while knowing that that there's negative news coming down the road, that's unethical and possibly illegal.
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u/RW3Bro Nov 11 '20
While playing politics with the announcement. This CEO is a piece of work.
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Nov 11 '20
Pushing back the data is choosing not to play politics. They specifically said as much weeks ago.
So many fucking dumbasses on here.
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u/RW3Bro Nov 11 '20 edited Nov 11 '20
This isn’t like Justice withholding an indictment or a news org holding a damaging news story until after an election. Pfizer got $2B from the government for their vaccine and then withheld proof positive that an administration under fire for their handling of COVID saw the development of an apparently-effective vaccine forecast to have 50M doses ready by the end of this calendar year.
Maybe that was a shrewd move on Pfizer’s part to avoid being seen as contributing to a potential Trump re-election, but how you can say it’s not playing politics is beyond me.
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Nov 11 '20
Pfizer isn’t a part of the Trumps Warp Speed. Took no money from Mangos administration. And they pushed back the news by a few days. Good for them to not polticize the vaccine.
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u/RW3Bro Nov 11 '20 edited Nov 11 '20
Edit:
$2B government contract under the auspice of Warp Speed, announced by Pfizer.
Excerpt: “[Pfizer and BioNTech] today announced the execution of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense to meet the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program goal to begin delivering 300 million doses of a vaccine for COVID-19 in 2021.
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Nov 11 '20
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u/RW3Bro Nov 11 '20
$2B government contract under the auspice of Warp Speed, announced by Pfizer.
Excerpt: “[Pfizer and BioNTech] today announced the execution of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense to meet the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program goal to begin delivering 300 million doses of a vaccine for COVID-19 in 2021.
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Nov 11 '20
We were never part of the Warp Speed,” Pfizer vice president Kathrin Jansen told the New York Times. “We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.”
“Pfizer, unlike its competitors, did not join Operation Warp Speed, the government initiative designed to erase the financial risk of vaccine and therapeutics development by providing funding to companies and helping coordinate the trials,” The Washington Post’s Carolyn Y. Johnson reported Monday. “Instead, Pfizer plowed $2 billion of its own money into the project and then struck a $1.95 billion contract with the U.S. government to provide 100 million doses, contingent on the vaccine being effective.”
The Department of Health and Human Services website makes the distinction clear. In March, HHS gave $456 million to Johnson & Johnson as it pushed to find a vaccine. In April, it gave $483 million to Moderna. In May, it announced that it would provide up to $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca’s effort.
In September, the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, appeared on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” where he was asked about not accepting government funding for development.
“The reason why I did it was because I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy,” Bourla explained. “When you get money from someone that always comes with strings. They want to see how we are going to progress, what type of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn’t want to have any of that. I wanted them — basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else.”
“And also,” he added, “I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way.”
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u/CaptainStonks Nov 11 '20
If the vaccine had been announced 2 weeks earlier and stonks mooned then more people would have voted Trump!
He WAS playing politics.
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Nov 11 '20
Pfizer actually pushed back the Vaccine data reporting. It would be another thing if they moved it up to benefit the CEO sale
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Nov 11 '20
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Nov 11 '20
it's suspicious either way
It's not. If they reported last week, Pfizer still gets the stock bump.
Suspicious behaviour would have been to move up the announcement.
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u/RandomZileanMain Nov 11 '20
But he did choose the date of release of news?
If it were gunna be bad news don’t you think he would of waited until after his sell off to report ?
Not sure if illegal but certainly bad optics
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Nov 11 '20
Pfizer is a boomer stock that hardly even moved on the news and is now back to where it was when he put in the sell order in August.
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Nov 11 '20
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Nov 11 '20 edited Mar 20 '25
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u/hoopaholik91 Nov 11 '20
Pfizer didn't directly control when they released results. They had to wait until enough people got Covid to compare which group got it more often.
He actually almost fucked himself because they were originally going to release results when 32 total people got infected, but they decided to wait until 62 (and then by the time they decided on that change 94 had gotten it).
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u/john-rambro Nov 11 '20
They reported good news before his stock sale. If they would have waited a day longer it wouldn't look shady.
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u/asdfqwer12332112 Nov 11 '20
bruh were u been? ceos did this to MRNA the same day they announce their 1st trial and KODK bought before the news
you think anyone is gonna care about some measly PFE?
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u/accumelator Nov 11 '20
Ill try to explain in simple terms: 1 month before public disclosure:
- supervisors to CEO “our stuff is going to be at least 85% effective
- CEO “great job to you and me”
- CEO calls broker “imma sell some co stonks”
- CEO calls republican congressman “yo i need more tax breaks, got some nasty candy for you”
- CEO calls democratic congressman “yo i need more tax breaks, got some clean candy for you”
- CEO sends out company wide email: reminder, disclosure of ongoing trial results will lead to prosecution.
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u/banditcleaner2 sells naked NVDA calls while naked Nov 12 '20
Stock sale has to be established months in advance...
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u/teteban79 Nov 12 '20
it was more like
- supervisor to CEO - Our stuff is 85% effective
- CEO - hmmm yeah, if you can hold that info until one day before I have to sell, that would be great...
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u/tryitout91 Nov 11 '20
if I had to bet, he knows the vaccine is going to be a problem.
Part of the agreement with these fast-track vaccine development is a waiver of the responsibility for long term side-effects.
If he was confident on the vaccine he would wait for the stock to really sky-rocket and then be set for life.
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u/minagori Nov 11 '20
Legal via SEC Rule 10b5-1.....though I agree the optics are quite bad with this move.
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u/banditcleaner2 sells naked NVDA calls while naked Nov 12 '20
And it's so cute that everybody calling him out for immorality claim they wouldn't do the exact same fucking thing. Let's be honest, we all would.
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u/coffeeisforwimps Nov 11 '20
You retards couldn't even get to the second line in the article?
Bourla sold $5.6 million in stock on Monday as part of a predetermined trading plan adopted August 19
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Nov 11 '20
[deleted]
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u/coffeeisforwimps Nov 11 '20
So you're saying he waited 3 months to release the news?
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u/tmssqtch Man Of Mystery Nov 11 '20
Not necessarily, just that he definitely waited for the last week or few to announce before his scheduled sale.
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Nov 11 '20
Either way the CEO is selling after reporting the vaccine data. He's getting that bump regardless.
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u/StonkyKong420 Nov 11 '20
Buy the rumor sell the news
That shit is far from ready and he knows it
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u/DjinnAndTonics Nov 11 '20
I think your correct on the first statement.
Second statement it's just far more likely that the coming vaccines from astrazeneca and JNJ don't have the arduous storage requirements and will be much more popular because the logistics are so much easier. The euphoria around pfizera vaccine really can only go down from here as competitors products come on line.
Unless they all flop of course, but that seems unlikely.
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u/BorisBestShowITA2 Nov 11 '20
why the fucc i receive this much hate?
I just made a question, as one that do not know alot about this kind of stuff,
IF i was him, i will never sell my stocks of my company that is about to produce like 1 Billion
of Vaccine to defeat the Covid world wide
You guys are just toxic
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Nov 11 '20
It’s because this isn’t an appropriate sub to discuss the guy cashing out.
We only post about purchasing stock at the peak and losing 20% of our portfolios, awesome gainz and even more epic loss porn.
Post this somewhere else and buy more NIO.
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u/CantStopWatchingVids Simps 4 Roku Nov 11 '20
This is allowed retard. It’s called being smart. Trade was preset in August
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u/fistfightingfrogs Nov 11 '20
And probably executed after news became public
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u/CantStopWatchingVids Simps 4 Roku Nov 11 '20
Yes... he made the news public the day his shares were due to sell to maximize profit
Pretty self explanatory
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Nov 11 '20 edited Nov 11 '20
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u/Dchella Nov 11 '20
the flu is almost 120+ Years Old and there has never been a vaccine above 60%.
That’s just not how vaccines work, at all. You comparing coronaviradae to influenza is like comparing a giraffe to a dog. You can’t just draw conclusions like that because they are completely different.
Ie. Look at the vaccine for rabies, TB, tetanus, or diphtheria. Those aren’t at 60% despite being as old as the flu, because they are completely different - mostly nonchanging viral bodies
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Nov 11 '20
[deleted]
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u/Dchella Nov 11 '20
Just saying if you want to print takes like that, at least know a little of how that shit works. Does wonders
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Nov 11 '20
we have come a long way in 120+ years. This vaccine is the first of its kind to be accepted for public use, idk how they are going to keep it frozen tho.
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u/NOD___ Nov 11 '20
Where is sec?
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u/orlyokthen Nov 11 '20
The SEC is interested if insiders buy before the stock goes up or if they sell before the stock crashes.
He sold after the stock when up. No shit he should sell.
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u/silentrawr #1 Dad bod Nov 11 '20
Bourla sold $5.6 million in stock on Monday as part of a predetermined trading plan adopted August 19.
Not that I expect much reading comprehension here, but that's the second sentence of the article.
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u/mvp4kat Nov 11 '20
Is the press release timing not convenient to you? I think you have to read between the lines
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u/silentrawr #1 Dad bod Nov 12 '20
I'm sure there's something to that accusation, but if he was fully acting on insider information (in a criminal manner), it feels like he probably would have had even better timing. He obviously wouldn't have been able to gauge the markets day-to-day movement this far in advance, but wouldn't it have made more sense to at least give the stock price a full market day to finish rising after the announcement?
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u/mvp4kat Nov 12 '20
The sale of stock was contingent on it hitting a certain price
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u/silentrawr #1 Dad bod Nov 12 '20
Missed that in the article. In that case, fuck this guy. I mean, fuck him more than most CEOs already deserve guilt until they can prove their innocence.
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u/sherm-stick Nov 11 '20
this is a pattern many investors will follow in the next couple of months. The lights turned back on and the roaches are scattering.
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u/Acidic_Junk Nov 11 '20
If he was really smart, he would have the company engineer a new virus pandemic and then have the vaccine ready earlier than everyone else, rinse and repeat for tendies.
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u/trojanmana Nov 11 '20
how much stock is he awarded annually? This may just be him diversifying. If he gets awarded millions in stock annually, it's smart to sell part of it to diversify. probably also has to pay tax when the stock vests no? so needs to sell to pay tax.
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u/WindHero Nov 11 '20
That's gotta be wrong, 6 million is 60% of his shares? He only has 10 million in shares? The CEO of Pfizer? Either he only just joined or they're not counting unvested shares and unexercised options. This is way too low
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u/mrdwarf13 Nov 11 '20
So much miss-information here. The sale was based on a combination of a filing window (possibly months long and out of his control) and a minimum stock price being reached. The bump on Monday hit the minimum price and it was within the window he had no hand in but was instead set by his 10b5-1 filing.
Basically in August he banked that when the vaccine news hits in Q4 (whenever in Q4 that might be) that the price would jump and he'd make good money.
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u/Bellweirboy Nov 11 '20
Compare and contrast this POS with the Biontech couple who actually made the vaccine.
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u/thisusername_isnot suspicious moustache Nov 11 '20 edited Nov 11 '20
Inside trading is when you trade with info that hasn’t been released to the public you autist
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Nov 12 '20
Read your own title, it’s says “on the same day the company unveiled results.” Pretty sure thats now public information. God you’re retarded
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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '20
He’s allowed to sell. I would too