Pfizer CEO sold $5.6 million of stock as company announced vaccine data that sent shares soaring
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla sold almost $5.6 million worth of stock on Monday, the same day the drugmaker announced positive early data on its experimental coronavirus vaccine that sent shares soaring.
Shares of Pfizer jumped by almost 15% on Monday after the company and its partner BioNTech said its vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing Covid-19 among those in the trial without evidence of prior infection.
Bourla sold 132,508 shares at an average price of $41.94 per share, or nearly $5.6 million, according to a securities filing. The sale was part of a pre-scheduled 10b5-1 trading plan, which was adopted on Aug. 19, the filing shows, as the company was enrolling participants in its late-stage trial.
According to the company’s 2019 proxy report, Bourla, who became CEO on Jan. 1, 2019, was being paid a base salary of $1.65 million starting April 1. Nine times that salary would be about $15 million worth of shares.
Baird biotech analyst Brian Skorney defended the sale, saying that it’s a “highlight of how capitalism can work at its best.” Skorney said that Bourla “fully deserves this” and that his profit from the sale is miniscule compared with the net benefit an effective Covid-19 vaccine will provide the world.
Bourla is not the first pharmaceutical or biotech executive to cash in on his company’s stock gains during the pandemic. The top five executives at the biotech company Moderna, which has another Covid-19 vaccine in development, have sold more than $80 million this year as the company’s stock shot up more than 300% since Jan. 1, Stat News reported earlier this year.
Nov. 16, 2020