When any member of an ASX 200 stock's management offloads $46 million worth of shares, it's usually enough to make investors pay attention.
After all, $46 million is no small chunk of change. Investors usually like to see management align themselves financially with shareholders, so share sales of this magnitude often cause at least some discomfort among the investor class.
This situation is exactly what is confronting owners of ASX tech share WiseTech Global Ltd (ASX: WTC) right now.
And it's not just any member of Wisetech's management team who has just sold $46 million worth of shares. It's Richard White, the co-founder and CEO.
Yes, according to an ASX filing made public last week, CEO Richard White sold 364,261 Wisetech shares in on-market trades between 6 and 12 September. White owns his Wisetech shares through a private company called RealWise Holdings Pty Ltd, in which he has a 91.83% stake.
The filing reveals that White offloaded those 364,261 shares for an average price of $126.44 a share, implying a total sales volume of approximately $46.06 million.
This is not the first time White has significantly reduced his Wisetech holdings. We first covered a $45 million sale from White in early July.
Between 30 August and 5 September this month, the ASX 200 CEO also offloaded an additional 379,436 shares for a tidy sum of $46.05 million.
So White appears to be selling his own company's shares like hotcakes.
Should investors be worried?
Why is this ASX 200 CEO selling down his own stock?
Whether this is something to worry about is, at the end of the day, a matter for each Wisetech shareholder. However, it's worth noting that White still retains a Wisetech stake of 116,706,769 shares.
Those would have a collective value of approximately $15.37 billion at the current Wisetech share price of $131.68 (at the time of writing).
Back in July, we also covered how White had banked more than $2 billion worth of paper share price gains over the 2024 financial year alone.
So, although these $40 million-plus share sales seem like big chunks of change (which they, of course, are for most of us), they are a drop in the ocean for White. His financial interests are still indisputably aligned with Wisetech shareholders.
CEOs, like everyone else, like to adhere to prudent financial practices. Many simply like to make small efforts to diversify away from having all of their wealth eggs in one basket. So again, it's up to Wisetech shareholders to decide how to view these sales. But they certainly aren't as dramatic as they might seem for ordinary investors like us.
