If you own shares of ASX tech stock WiseTech Global Ltd (ASX: WTC), you would probably be used to seeing the company's controversial former CEO and current executive chair, Richard White, selling his shares.
As a co-founder of WiseTech, White remains one of the company's largest shareholders. However, he is certainly not shy about reducing his stockpile. We have covered White's long history of cashing in his WiseTech shares here before. However, White hasn't sold any shares for a few months now. That hiatus came to an end last month, though.
ASX filings show that White resumed selling down his stockpile of WiseTech shares in late August, following the company's poorly-received full-year earnings report on 27 August.
The first filing revealed that White offloaded 703,300 WiseTech shares between 28 August and 4 September for an average price of $98.17 per share, for a total value of just over $69 million.
A subsequent filing informed the market that White then went on to offload another 550,700 shares between 5 and 11 September at an average price of $94.23 (worth $51.89 million).
The selling continued through that month. Another ASX notice from 19 September showed White cashing in another 519,100 WiseTech shares between 12 and 18 September, sold at a price of $96.76, for $50.23 million.
The latest filing, released just last Friday, revealed another big sale. White found buyers for an additional 709,800 WiseTech shares between 19 and 25 September, at $95.82 a share. Those sales came to just over $68 million.
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CEO sells $239 million worth of WiseTech shares
So, all in all, Richard White cashed in a total of just over $239 million in WiseTech shares over August and September. The timing is certainly interesting, as the sales came after the steep sell-off we saw that followed the late August earnings report. White has chosen to sell in the $90-100 share price range, despite the company hitting over $120 a share in July.
The company hasn't come out and explained why these heavy WiseTech share sales were executed by White. Perhaps he wants to buy a new house or pay down a tax bill. Perhaps he simply wants to further diversify his wealth away from one massive holding. In that light, it is worth pointing out that the chair still owns 117.88 million shares of his company. Those would be worth a total of roughly $10.92 billion at the current share price of $92.60 (at the time of writing).
That figure certainly puts White's recent stock sales in context. Let's see what's next for WiseTech shares.
