An Afterpay Touch Group Ltd (ASX: APT) director has sold around $3 million of shares, is it time to worry?
Afterpay Touch is the owner of the popular “buy now, pay later” app. As of 2018, Afterpay had over 2.5 million registered users world-wide, making it one of Australia’s true technology success stories.
Afterpay Director Sells Shares
Who was the director that sold?
The Afterpay director in question was Non-Executive Director, Mr Clifford Johann Rosenberg. He has been in his role since March 2017. He has spent more than 20 years working at digital companies such as being a senior executive at LinkedIn, he has also been Managing Director of Yahoo ANZ and head of strategy for Vodafone Australasia.
How much was sold?
In the first week of March, Mr Rosenberg sold 150,000 Afterpay shares on the market for nearly $3 million. So it’s a fairly sizeable sale.
Does he have many shares left?
He still indirectly owns 650,000 ordinary Afterpay shares, which are currently valued at over $12 million. So, by holding so many shares, he is still giving the buy now, pay later business a large vote of confidence.
Plus he has 700,000 unlisted options under an employee option plan with an exercise price of $0.20 per option with an expiry date of 1 September 2020. Then, another parcel of 200,000 unlisted options with an exercise price of $1 per option with an expiry date of 31 December 2020.
Should shareholders worry?
A share sale by management on average isn’t a good thing, particularly when a share price has done well as it may be a signal that management think the share price is expensive.
However, with over $12 million still at stake by owning shares, I can understand if Mr Rosenberg needs to access the cash for any number of legitimate reasons.
The company continues to grow well in Australia and the US, with plans to expand into the UK. But, with a huge amount of optimism built into the share price I would prefer to invest in lower valued growth shares.
2 ASX shares valued much cheaper than Afterpay
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