Solar Stock Insider Sales: GT Solar CEO Sells
NEW YORK (
) -- The recent rally in shares of U.S. solar equipment maker
GT Solar
(SOLR)
may have provided an opportune time for the solar company's CEO to unload his first major block of insider shares.
GT Solar CEO Thomas Gutierrez, who assumed the reins of the solar equipment maker in 2009, sold $274,000 worth of GT Solar shares last Friday, or roughly 41% of his stake in the company.
It was the first stock sale by the GT Solar CEO since he took over the company in October 2009, according to inside sales tracker
Insiderscore.com
.
GT Solar shares had dropped from a 26-month high on November 8 after Credit Suisse downgraded the entire sector on fears of an oversupply crash in 2011.
It's always a tenuous case at best when major insiders sell shares, because there are always a variety of personal financial planning needs and options exercise schedules that have to be discounted. However, solar insider selling merits attention at a time when the market is split over whether 2011 will be a year of growth or contraction.
In another notable recent solar insider transaction, members of the Walton family, heirs of the Wal-mart fortune, sold another chunk of their huge holding in U.S. solar bellwether
First Solar
(FSLR) - Get Report
. For a change, the Waltons sold First Solar at a share price of $122 -- their previous trigger for First Solar sales has been in the area of $140 -- which First Solar has climbed back toward in trading since the Walton's most recent First Solar sale.
By the beginning of December, GT Solar shares had slipped as low as $7 after rallying to a share price of $10 in November.
Last week, Wunderlich Securities put out a research note describing GT Solar as a potential takeout candidate. On the same day, a major polysilicon producer in China, and client of GT Solar, announced plans for a capacity expansion that added to the existing GT Solar backlog of business. GT Solar shares spiked from $8 all the way up to $9.40 as a result.
Gutierrez sold the insider shares of GT Solar last Friday at a price of $9.12.
The inside sales watchdog
Insiderscore.com
raised a skeptical eyebrow about the timing of the GT Solar CEO sale. "SOLR may indeed be an attractive takeover opportunity (that's for others to decide), but Gutierrez's sale suggests that the company's CEO doesn't believe such an action is going to occur in the near-term,"
Insiderscore.com
wrote in a note discussing the sale.
GT Solar shares were down 2% on Tuesday.
-- Written by Eric Rosenbaum from New York.
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