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$274M in Insider Sales from Previously 2nd Most Important Person at Tesla (TSLA) Should Raise Eyebrows - GLJ Research

June 18, 2021 10:58 AM EDT
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Bearish Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) analyst Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research explores the massive insider selling from former top executive Jerome Guillen, who was head of Heavy Trucking and recently announced his departure.

Johnson notes that Guillen has sold $274.135 million worth of TSLA stock over the past 8 days to little media attention (StreetInsider did a report on a large sale by Guillen on Wednesday). This is "virtually all of his vested stock options based on our math," Johnson commented.

The analyst notes Guillen is not required to file the normal Form 4s when he sells his stock, instead he is filing Form 144s, which, according to Johnson, is why this news is flying seemingly completely under the radar of the media.

While Johnson said he won't pretend to know the motivations of Guillen, "given he has been an integral part of the TSLA team in many roles since 2010, as well as our work that suggests he walked away from $300mm of in-the-money unvested options (also implying he was either fired, had a falling out, or got a sweetheart deal – he has basically gone from 1.3mn in share exposure a week ago (vested and unvested) to about 150k today, and getting smaller by the day) we see these shares sales as a potentially material leading indicator of what’s to come for TSLA (before his time at TSLA, Mr. Guillen was an engineer at Daimler AG)."

The analyst goes on to asks readers: “Should TSLA be on the verge of technological and autonomous breakthroughs and breakout 2Q21E deliveries/earnings, as well as EV domination, why has what many assumed was the second most important person at the company (i.e., Jerome Guillen) sold $274mn worth of TSLA stock (i.e., essentially all of his vested stock options, based on our calculations)?”



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