Who is selling SCO stock?
Perhaps the most interesting filing so far is this S/3A form, first filed in February and since updated several times. It appears that two external stockholders, John R. Wall and Morgan Keegan & Co., have decided to dump an even million shares that they hold. SCO has gone through the whole registration process - at its expense - to make this happen, but the proceeds go directly to the two sellers.
Mr. Wall got his (800,000) shares at the end of 2002 (along with $100,000 in cash) for a $1 million note payable by Vista.com, a company he founded. Those shares, at current prices, are worth nearly $7 millon. Not a bad deal.
Morgan Keegan was retained by the company "to act as an exclusive financial advisor to assist the Company in its analysis, consideration and if appropriate, execution of various financial and strategic alternatives available to it including, but not limited to, securing additional equity and/or debt capital and potential strategic transactions including mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures" (2002 annual report). The cynical among us might conclude that a "strategic alternative" has indeed been chosen. There is, however, no evidence that either of these two large shareholders have anything to do with the lawsuit - they are simply happy beneficiaries.
There have been some recent sales by SCO executives:
- Opinder Bawa has
one
filing for having sold 15,000 shares, and another
for 8,000 shares. He would appear to have sold all the shares he
possesses (but he still has a lot of options).
- Robert Bench
has three filings: 7000
shares, 5000
shares, and 4100
shares.
- Jeff
Hunsaker sold 5000
shares at the beginning of June.
- Darl McBride sold 7000 shares just after the suit was filed.
The record thus shows a small amount of cashing-in as the stock price
goes up, but, with the exception of the large sale by John Wall and Morgan
Keegan, nothing all that significant. If all this is truly an effort by
SCO management to cash out, the people involved have not yet made their
move.