Arm Holdings executives unloaded millions worth of stock before an announcement from Nvidia drove shares to a record high.
Arm Holdings executives sold close to $26 million worth of stock between mid-May and early June, missing the rally that would take shares to a record high.
Spencer Collins, Arm’s chief legal officer and company secretary, executed the biggest sale, unloading $8.8 million worth of stock on May 19. Collins sold 40,941 shares priced at $215 each, and owned no other shares directly following the transaction.
He wasn’t the only one to clear out his direct holdings. Chief People Officer Charlotte Eaton sold a combined 14,905 shares for $4.2 million across the two days starting May 20. After the sales, she owned no other company stock directly.
Will Abbey sold 29,477 shares for $8.2 million across five days beginning in May. His last sale was on Monday. Most recently, Chief Accounting Officer Laura Bartels sold 11,306 shares for roughly $392.70 each, or $4.4 million in total, on Tuesday.
Barron’s reached out to Arm Holdings for comment on the transactions, which amounted to roughly $25.6 million worth of company stock.
Notably, all four executives sold before Arm closed at a record $411.83 on Wednesday. In the previous session, shares hit a record intraday high of $427.99.
Those gains kicked off after Nvidia unveiled its RTX Spark “superchip,” which uses Arm’s central processing unit architecture.
Arm is ubiquitous in the semiconductor space. Chips using its architecture can be found everywhere from smartphones to Apple MacBooks. Instead of manufacturing the processors themselves, Arm designs the blueprints and licenses its intellectual property to tech companies.
The rally has lost steam. After the bell Wednesday, Broadcom—another Arm client—issued disappointing full-year guidance, in turn triggering a broad selloff across the semi sector. Investors were looking for CEO Hock Tan to hike the company’s target of $100 billion in artificial-intelligence chip sales for the year.
Inside Scoop is a regular Barron’s feature covering stock transactions by corporate executives and board members—so-called insiders—as well as large shareholders, politicians, and other prominent figures. Due to their insider status, these investors are required to disclose stock trades with the Securities and Exchange Commission or other regulatory groups.
Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com