Apple Insiders' Happy Tunes

Oppenheimer's sales came as part of a series of transactions made beginning last Monday. They represented the first time Oppenheimer, who has been with the company since 1996, had exercised a significant number of options. The options he exercised were not in danger of expiring in the near future.

Apple does not list Oppenheimer as one of its top-paid executives or as one of its top shareholders, and therefore has not divulged his options holdings or his salary.

However, according to the filings he made last week, he holds only 14,143 shares of Apple stock outright, a pittance compared with the number of options he sold.

Other Apple executives who have exercised options recently include Avadis Tevanian Jr., the company's chief software technology officer; Ronald Johnson, senior vice president in charge of Apple's retail operations; Bertrand Serlat, senior vice president of software engineering; and Nancy Heinen, the company's general counsel.

Of those employees, Tevanian has sold the most stock and seen the biggest gains, cashing in 900,000 options since mid-August for a gross windfall of about $36.5 million.

But the others also saw significant gains. Johnson, for instance, cashed in 750,000 shares in August for a $22.6 million gain. In a series of sales dating from July to last week, Serlat exercised 140,000 options seeing a $5.1 million gain. And Heinen cashed in 125,000 options for a $4.7 million windfall.

Too Much Exercise?

For Johnson and Tevanian, who are both listed among Apple's top-paid executives, the options exercises amounted to more than 20% of the options they held at the end of the company's 2004 fiscal year.

While Johnson didn't exercise any options in fiscal 2004, Tevanian cashed in 700,000 options that year for a gross gain of $8.8 million, according to Apple's filings.

Regardless, for both Johnson and Tevanian, the recent options exercises represent a huge windfall compared with their cash compensation. Johnson, for instance, had a base salary of $484,836 in fiscal 2004 and received a cash bonus of $1.5 million.