Million-dollar paydays for Xero pair
Chairman, COO cash in.
Xero chairman Sam Knowles and chief operating officer Alastair Grigg cashed in some of their shares, which have more than tripled in price in the past 12 months, after a "black-out" period ended when the accounting software developer reported its annual result last week.
Notices lodged with the stock exchange show Mr Knowles, who was the founding chief executive of Kiwibank, sold 100,000 shares at $13.04 apiece, reaping $1.3 million on May 29.
Mr Grigg sold 200,000 on the same day at the same price, netting $2.6 million, and a further 15,300 at $13 each, for $199,000.
The shares gained 1.2 percent to $13.40 today and have surged 74 percent this year alone.
The transactions leave Mr Knowles with 469,000 shares worth $6.28 million at today's price and Mr Grigg with 1.19 million shares worth almost $16 million.
The directors and officers of Xero were in a restricted trading period in the 30 days leading up to the earnings result.
While Messrs Grigg and Knowles sold down, chief revenue officer Stuart McLean, who joined Xero in March from Google, bought 15,300 shares at $13 apiece.
Xero director Sam Morgan, of Trade Me fame, sold 1 million shares at $7.40 in December, reducing his stake to 4.37 percent, a month after the company's three biggest shareholders – chief executive Rod Drury, director Craig Winkler and co-founder Hamish Edward – sold a total of $22 million shares at $6 apiece.
That sale was in tandem with Xero's $60 million sale of new shares at the same price to Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures and Matrix Capital Management.
As at March 31, Mr Drury was still the biggest shareholder with 21.7 million shares, or about 19 percent, followed by Winkler with 18.5 million shares, or 16 percent, then Matrix Capital with 9.8 percent and Thiel with 7 percent.
The company has 4715 shareholders on its register, with 54 of them holding 83.7 percent.
Xero [NZX:XRO] was up 3.51% to $13.65 in late trading.
(BusinessDesk)
Paul McBeth and NBR staff
Wed, 11 Jul 2018
Wed, 11 Jul 2018
© All content copyright NBR. Do not reproduce in any form without permission, even if you have a paid subscription.
Million-dollar paydays for Xero pair
29815