Insiders Unloading Stock before Earnings Continued Week 7-24-21

Insiders Selling Stock

Click on the spreadsheet above to see earnings release dates

This may look a lot like last week’s post. You won’t’ see much in the way of insider buying this month with the quarter just ended for most public companies. Almost all insiders are subject to blackout rules which can vary from company to company but generally at least 30 days before earnings and sometimes up to 45 days, insiders are prohibited from buying and selling their own stock unless they do it by the giant loophole that the SEC has allowed them, known as the 10b5-1 plan.

It’s always hard to read much into selling as people sell the stock for a variety of reasons but when you step into this window right before earnings, you should expect a little more scrutiny.  We will be updating this post with the most egregious sales, those brazen enough to unload large amounts onto the public possibly before an earnings bomb.  Do your own research here and be careful. Stocks can move sharply up or down on earnings announcements. It’s generally the most volatile time to own any company’s security.

We are looking for good kills here.  Stocks go down much faster than they go up. With the market rally increasingly acting flaky, the breadth absolutely horrible, it’s looking like a great time to bring out the short playbook.

Opinion: There are two Zooms in this post. I read of many people buying Zoom Info when they thought they were buying the video conferencing giant. Sometimes your mistakes are better than your choices and this would have been the case this year. Zoom Info ZI is scheduled to report Q3 earnings after the close on August 2nd. 22 insiders sold $97,546 shares of Zoom Info ZI.  One group labeled as Kirk Brown sold 100% of their holdings on 7-1, another DO Holdings sold the same amount at the same price, $50.92 which leads me to believe it could be the same entity. Another hedge fund group fronted by TC Group and Carlyle Partners dumped all their 71,615 shares on the same day at $52.44.  Director Nornov sold all his shares on 6-30  for $53.85 along with TA Atlantic and TA Associates.  Carlyle was selling 199,208 emptying out this holding on 6-28.  It goes on and on, 22 insiders sales for  $97,546,625.

This may be nothing more than hedge funds getting out of a profitable position.

UBS lowered their target to $50 on June 15th, RBC lowered it to $60 and a Mizuho analyst reiterated a $63 price target the same day.  This was all after their virtual analyst day.

Name: Bawa Aparna
Position: COO
Shares Sold: 2,593, Average Price : $381.25 Market Value: $988,573

Name: Yuan Eric S
Position: CEO 10% Owner
Shares Sold: 96,154, Average Price: $380.14 Market Value: $36,551,665

Name: Pelosi Janine
Position: Chief Marketing Officer
Shares Sold: 4,000, Average Price : $379.04 Market Value: $1,516,160

Name: Steckelberg Kelly
Position: CFO
Shares Sold: 6,700, Average Price : $369.81 Market Value: $2,477,720
Company: Zoom Video Communications Inc. (ZM)
Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (stylized as zoom or simply Zoom) is an American communications technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. It provides video telephony and online chat services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social relations.

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. brings teams together to get more done in a frictionless and secure video environment. It’s an easy, reliable, and innovative video-first unified communications platform that provides video meetings, voice, webinars, and chat across desktops, phones, mobile devices, and conference room systems. Zoom helps enterprises create elevated experiences with leading business app integrations and developer tools to create customized workflows.

Aparna Bawa J.D. serves as Chief Operating Officer, Secretary, Interim Chief Legal Officer of the Company. Ms. Bawa has served as the Company’s Chief Legal Officer from August 2019 to May 2020, its General Counsel from September 2018 to May 2020, and its Secretary since December 2018. Before joining the Company, Ms. Bawa served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Magento, Inc., an e-commerce platform corporation, from June 2017 until its acquisition by Adobe Inc. in June 2018. From November 2012 to May 2017, Ms. Bawa served as Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of Nimble Storage, Inc.

Eric S. Yuan serves as Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer, Founder of the Company. From May 2007 to June 2011, Mr. Yuan served as Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco Systems, Inc., a multinational technology company. Most recently, Mr. Yuan served in various roles as Vice President of Engineering at WebEx Communications, Inc., an internet company, from August 1997 until its acquisition by Cisco Systems, Inc. in May 2007.

Pelosi serves as Chief Marketing Officer of the Company. Janine has led Zoom’s corporate marketing initiatives, including go-to-market strategies, brand awareness, communications, product marketing, lead generation, and customer marketing. Additionally, in 2018 she began leading Zoom’s online business unit. Janine brings over 15 years of strategic marketing experience to Zoom, providing in-depth knowledge of SaaS business models. Before joining Zoom, Janine led the worldwide demand generation function for the collaboration business unit at Cisco.

Kelly Steckelberg serves as Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Kelly Steckelberg brings to Zoom extensive leadership and finance experience. Most recently, she was CEO of Zoosk, where she previously held positions of CFO and COO. Before Zoosk, Kelly was the Sr. Director of Consumer Segment Finance of Cisco. Kelly has also held various roles in finance at Cisco Webex, Epiphany, PeopleSoft, and KPMG.

Opinion: Is there anyone that hasn’t heard of Zoom? It’s certainly been as good as it can be on the growth and adoption curve for this remarkable software company.  I don’t think any company has grown so rapidly and become a household name so quickly. “Zoom” like “Google” has become a noun in our vocabulary. The question though is Zoom a good investment?

Do you really need to pay for a dedicated video conferencing platform going forward? I don’t pretend to know the answer to this but when our annual Zoom accounts come up for renewal, I will have to think long and hard about this. As dedicated Google Workspace customers, we use Google meetings frequently and it is free so far.  Zoom surprised entrenched players, software giants, and well-funded startups that they had a better mousetrap.  Now the cats are awake and expect competition and price erosion to be fierce. I think I’d rather be short than long Zoom at a forward P.E of 76. Zoom is not scheduled to report earnings until some time in September and some insiders are not waiting.

Name: Garcia Ernest C
Position: Verde Investments Inc 10% Owner
Shares Sold: 60.000, Average Price: $324.24, Market Value: $1,94,54,509
Company : Carvana Co. (CVNA)
“We sell cars, but we’re not car salespeople,” is a popular refrain at Carvana. Instead, They provide a seamless online car buying experience for customers from coast to coast. Carvana allows customers to browse, finance and purchase more than 15,000 vehicles from the comfort of home or on the go via their mobile device, while also offering the convenience of selling your car to them without ever having to step foot inside a dealership. Customers who purchase with Carvana enjoy the peace of mind that comes with their 7-day return policy, and the sense of security in knowing that each and every Carvana vehicle is Carvana Certified, having passed a rigorous 150-point inspection and has never been in a reported accident. And with the option to choose as-soon-as next-day delivery or pick up from one of their signature Car Vending Machines, the days of spending a Saturday at the dealership are officially over! Carvana opened its first iteration of a car vending machine. In 2015, a fully automated, coin-operated version of the signature car vending machine opened in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2017 Carvana acquired rival automotive startup Calypso to enhance vehicle data and analytical tools. In April 2018, Carvana spent $22 million to acquire Mark Cuban-backed Car360 for its smartphone technology for taking vehicle photos with 3D computer vision, machine learning and augmented reality.

Ernest Garcia III serves as Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Mr. Garcia is also Chairman of the Carvana Co. Board. Before founding Carvana, Mr. Garcia held various roles at DriveTime from January 2007 to January 2013. From January 2007 to December 2008, he served as a financial strategist. He was a managing director of corporate finance from December 2008 to November 2009. From November 2009 until January 2013, he served as a vice president and treasurer, and director of quantitative analytics. As director of quantitative analytics, Mr. Garcia was responsible for the firm’s ongoing development of consumer credit scoring models and its utilization of those tools in retail-vehicle-sales deal structuring and vehicle-price optimization.

Carvana CVNA

Opinion: Six insiders sold $91.34 million worth of stock in June between $266 and $303. CVNA has been a killer stock. It’s unconfirmed but they report on August 4th after the market close. I spent a lot of time on Carvana this last November looking for a used car to replace my Tesla Model X coming off of the lease. What I learned is that Car Gurus, Cars.com, and others are still behind the ease and convenience of Carvana. I found a much better deal though on Cars.com from a dealer in L.A.  It was a lot more work though.

I think Carvana has been a big beneficiary of the well-reported semiconductor shortage supply chain disruption in the automobile industry. This will inevitably end. Shorting CVNA prior to this may be painful. I expect beat and raise quarters from them until dealers can stock up inventory. Once that happens used car sales should slow down and CVNA stock may come down to earth. It seems like insiders are not waiting. There is a steady drumbeat of sales. Carvana reports on August 5th.

Name: Cohan Steven D
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 80,000, Average Price: $139.46, Market Value: $11,156,776

Name: Adair A Jayson
Position: CEO
Shares Sold: 130,000, Average Price: $139.21, Market Value: $18,096,976
Company: COPART INC (CPRT)
Copart, a global online auto auction company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is a top-performing S&P 500 company, as noted by The Wall Street Journal. Copart is a global technology leader in the online vehicle auction industry that connects its buyers and sellers via its patented cutting-edge VB3 technology. With a passion for excellence, Copart has an excellent company culture and strong dedication to our employees. Founded in 1982, Copart connects more than 750,000 buyers and sellers from over 200 locations worldwide. We remarket salvage and clean title vehicles to dealers, dismantlers, rebuilders, exporters, and end-users through a multi-channel online internet platform with our innovative technology. Copart’s diverse and extensive inventory features more than 175,000 vehicles available online every day, including early and late-model cars, classics, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, boats, jet-skis, snowmobiles, and RVs.

Copart sells vehicles on behalf of insurance companies, banks, finance companies, fleet owners, car dealerships, cars sourced from the general public, etc. Because we are a 100% online auto auction company, Copart Members can browse our incredible inventory, set their price, and get great deals on vehicles through their home computer, smartphone, or another mobile device. Copart’s vehicles can range in condition from damaged vehicles that can be used as rebuild projects to like-new, used vehicles.

Steven D. Cohan CPA serves as Independent Director of the Company. Steven D. Cohan is a private investor who has served as the chief executive officer and director of Loco Ventures, Inc. This privately held company has operated various food manufacturing businesses in Northern California. Mr. Cohan brings a deep understanding of accounting principles and financial reporting rules and regulations, and substantial salvage vehicle industry expertise to their board of directors. He acquired this knowledge and expertise in serving as their principal accounting officer and later as their vice president of corporate development and his training as a certified public accountant.

A. Jayson Adair serves as Chief Executive Officer, Director of the Company. A. Jayson Adair has served as their chief executive officer. Mr. Adair served as our president. Mr. Adair served as their executive vice president. Mr. Adair served as their vice president of sales and operations, Mr. Adair served as their operations manager. Mr. Adair’s considerable knowledge and understanding of their company and their businesses and his extensive experience managing crucial aspects of their business provide our board with significant insight into our businesses and operations.

Opinion: Copart is a well-run company with growing revenues and profits from as far back as 2016. Why the stock took off in March and hasn’t looked back is a bit of a mystery to me. Perhaps it’s the same auto shortage that’s lifting Carvana? I’m leary about shorting this one but at 35 forward P.E. there doesn’t seem like much wipe-out risk but it could be painful.  I think it’s worth a shot but they don’t report until September 1 and I’d wait until then.

 

 

Name: Lynch William
Position: President
Shares Sold: 28,333, Average Price Paid: $114.68 Market Value: $3,249,107

Name: Callaghan Jon
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 10,000, Average Price: $114.48, Market Value: $1,144,809
Company : Peloton Interactive Inc (PTON)
Peloton is the leading interactive fitness platform globally, with a loyal community of more than 3.6 million members. The company pioneered connected, technology-enabled fitness and the streaming of immersive, instructor-led boutique classes for its Members anytime, anywhere. The Peloton makes fitness entertaining, approachable, effective, and convenient while fostering social connections that encourage its Members to be the best versions of themselves. An innovator at the nexus of fitness, technology, and media, Peloton has reinvented the fitness industry by developing a first-of-its-kind subscription platform that seamlessly combines the best equipment, proprietary networked software, and world-class streaming digital fitness and wellness content, creating a product that its Members love. The brand’s immersive content is accessible through the Peloton Bike, Peloton Tread, Peloton Bike, Peloton Tread, and Peloton App, which allows access to a full slate of fitness classes across disciplines, on any iOS or Android device, Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku TVs, and Chromecast and Android TV. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in New York City, Peloton has a growing number of retail showrooms across the US, UK, Canada, and Germany.

William J. Lynch Jr. serves as President, Director of the Company. William Lynch has served as their President since January 2017 and as a member of the board of directors since August 2019. Before joining us, Mr. Lynch served as the Chief Executive Officer of Savant Systems, LLC, a luxury brilliant home technology company, from May 2014 to November 2016. From March 2010 to June 2013, Mr. Lynch served as the Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble, and from February 2009 to March 2010, Mr. Lynch served as the President of Barnes & Noble.com, a business division of Barnes & Noble, where he oversaw the creation of the Nook product line and software.

Jonathan D. Callaghan serves as Independent Director of the Company. Jon Callaghan has served as a member of our board of directors since April 2015. Mr. Callaghan is a founder and Managing Member of True Ventures, a venture capital firm, where he has served since January 2006. Before True Ventures, Mr. Callaghan served as a Managing Director at Globespan Capital, a venture capital firm, and a Managing Partner at CMGI@Ventures, CMGI Inc.’s affiliated venture capital group. Mr. Callaghan served on the board of directors of Fitbit, Inc. from September 2008 to May 2018 and currently serves as a board of directors of several private companies.

Opinion: Peleton is a highly addictive and tremendous innovation in personalized sports and fitness training. I bought one for my fiance’ and she loves it. Peleton boasts that their users ride over 40 times per month. That’s actually unbelievable but there is no denying the transformation feeling you get when you put your Airpods on and clip in for a ride with a virtual world of a highly talented trainer and a universe of virtual riders. It was like getting behind the wheel of a Tesla for the first time. You pretty much have to experience it to understand the allure of Peleton.

I can’t think of two other businesses that have benefited and been put into the vernacular more than Zoom and Peleton. That being said, can you make any money in Peleton now? I believe in Peleton’s recurring revenue model and don’t believe it’s a Pandemic flash in the pan. With a forward P.E. of 230, don’t expect PTON to rally on September 9th earnings release. I expect it to retest the May low before earnings so I’d call it a short but a helluva bike.

 

Name: Bobo Donald E
Position: Strategy/Corp Development
Shares Sold: 11,050, Average Price: $108.15, Market Value: $1,195,111

Name: Wood Larry L
Position: Corporate Vice President
Shares Sold: 7,830, Average Price: $107.48, Market Value: $841,568

Name: Wang Huimin
Position: CVP Japan & Intercontinental
Shares Sold: 6,350, Average Price: $106.72, Market Value: $677,672

Name: Mussallem Michael A
Position: CEO Chairman
Shares Sold: 32,550, Average Price: $104.61, Market Value: $3,404,930
Company: Edwards Lifesciences Corp (EW)
Edwards Lifesciences is the global leader in patient-focused medical innovations for structural heart disease and critical care and surgical monitoring. Driven by a passion for helping patients, the company collaborates with the world’s leading clinicians and researchers to address unmet healthcare needs, working to improve patient outcomes and enhance lives. Edwards was a 60-year-old, recently retired engineer holding 63 patents in various industries, with an entrepreneurial spirit and a dream of helping patients with heart disease. His fascination with healing the heart was sparked in his teens when he suffered two bouts of rheumatic fever, which can scar heart valves and eventually cause the heart to fail.

Dedicated to improving patients’ lives with structural heart disease, their commitment to transformational heart valve technology began in 1960 with the first commercially available heart valve. Edwards has continued to advance heart valve therapy meaningfully, and, more than 50 years later, They remain a global leader in this field. Their offerings include tissue replacement heart valves and repair products and transcatheter heart valves for those patients considered at intermediate or greater risk for conventional valve replacement. The Edwards proven family of PERIMOUNT surgical valves are the world’s most frequently implanted valves. Decades of clinical experience and peer-reviewed data on Edwards valves provide robust evidence of long-term durability and proven hemodynamics of the PERIMOUNT valve platform.

Donald E. Bobo Jr. serves as Corporate Vice President – Strategy and Corporate Development of the Company. Mr. Bobo has been Corporate Vice President since 2007 and is currently responsible for Edwards’ corporate strategy and corporate development functions. In addition, Mr. Bobo has executive responsibility for the Company’s disease awareness and heart failure initiatives and the healthcare solutions and commercial services team. Mr. Bobo has more than 30 years of experience in the medical products and healthcare industry and has served in various operating roles at Edwards.

Larry L. Wood has been corporate vice president, Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR), since 2007 and has been responsible for the entire company.R&D operations, marketing, commercial, clinical and regulatory initiatives transcatheter valve replacement around the globe since the program was a development project. Under his leadership, Edwards has experienced extraordinary growth in the global TAVR business. The Edwards SAPIEN heart valve has won numerous awards, including the Prix Galien “Best Medical Technology Product” and “Discovery of the Decade” awards, and was named Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New” Grand Award winner in the Health category. Wood has more than 30 years of experience in the medical technology industry at both Edwards and Baxter Healthcare Corporation.

Huimin Wang, M.D., has been corporate vice president, Japan, Asia, and the Pacific since 2010. From 2004 to 2010, he served as corporate vice president, Japan, and intercontinental regions and, from 2000 to 2004, served as corporate vice president, Japan. Before joining Edwards, he served in several roles with Baxter Healthcare Corporation, including senior manager of strategy development, director of product/therapy for the renal division in Japan, and president of medical systems and devices in Japan. He was also a representative director of Baxter Limited, a Japanese corporation, from 2000 to 2002.

Michael A. Mussallem was appointed chairman and chief executive officer of Edwards Lifesciences in 2000 when it became an independent, publicly-traded company. Under his leadership, Edwards has established its position as a global leader in patient-focused medical innovations with the introduction of lifesaving and life-sustaining therapies such as transcatheter aortic valve replacement, new resilient surgical valves designed for active patients, and non-invasive hemodynamic monitoring. Driven by a passion for helping patients, the company collaborates with the world’s leading clinicians and researchers to address unmet healthcare needs, improve patient outcomes and enhance lives while delivering value to the healthcare system. Mussallem has led the development and successful implementation of the company’s patient-focused innovation strategy and established Edwards’ commitment to philanthropy and corporate social responsibility.

Opinion: Edward’s revenue growth is slowing. The pandemic had an adverse effect on many elective medical procedures but replacing a heart valve wasn’t probably one of them.  There may be a few points here on the downside but it’s hard betting against truly innovative companies. They report on July 29th and it could be time to take some profits from its recent surge.

 

Name: Zatlyn Michelle
Position: COO
Shares Sold: 33,330, Average Price: $108.12 Market Value: $3,603,501

Name: Seifert Thomas J
Position: CFO
Shares Sold: 20,000, Average Price : $108.06 Market Value: $2,161,262
Company: Cloudflare Inc. (NET)
Cloudflare, Inc. is an American web infrastructure and website security company that provides content delivery network services, DDoS mitigation, Internet security, and distributed domain name server services. Cloudflare’s services sit between a website’s visitor and the Cloudflare user’s hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites. Cloudflare’s headquarters are in San Francisco.

Cloudflare, Inc. is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare’s platform protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures 2018 list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2019. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Cloudflare has offices in Austin, TX, Champaign, IL, Seattle, WA, New York, NY, San Jose, CA, Washington, D.C., Lisbon, London, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.

Michelle Zatlyn serves as Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer, Director of the Company. Ms. Zatlyn is one of our co-founders and serves as our Chief Operating Officer. She served as our Head of User Experience from 2009 until appointed as our Chief Operating Officer in 2016. Ms. Zatlyn has served as a member of our Board of Directors since November 2009. She holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry and Business from McGill University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Ms. Zatlyn was selected to serve on our Board of Directors because of the perspective and experience she brings as our Chief Operating Officer and as one of our co-founders.

Thomas J. Seifert is Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Mr. Seifert has served as our Chief Financial Officer since June 2017. Before joining us, he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Symantec Corporation, a provider of cybersecurity software and services, from March 2014 to November 2016 and served in an advisory capacity to Symantec from December 2016 to March 2017. From December 2012 to March 2014, Mr. Seifert served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Brightstar Corp., a wireless distribution and services company. From October 2009 to September 2012, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Opinion: Cloudfare is ripe for a fall. Competitor Fastly is trading for 1/3rd its February high of $120 yet Cloudfare is close to lifetime highs. Is NET a security play or a content delivery network? Apparently, both. Revenue soared with its Web application firewall combined with the content delivery network.  As a pure subscription model with some of the most well-known brands using its service, the market has awarded it an insane valuation for a company that makes little to no money.

On May 7th  J.P. Morgan analyst Sterling Autry also has a neutral rating on the stock. He cut his price target to $86 from $91 but still offered some positive comments.

“Cloudflare is one of the few high-growth software stocks that has been able to sustain its growth for another quarter, as it generated a 51% increase compared to the 50% last quarter,” he wrote.

“This comes on the back of an expanding product portfolio and steady move upmarket as solutions gain credibility across companies of all sizes.”

Wind the clock forward three months and NET closed Friday at $104. It’s a crazy market but the world is going online at a furious rate because of the pandemic and NET is making hay while the sun shines.  They are expected to lose $.04 when they report on August 5th. Anything short of a massive beat and profit will probably send it tumbling.

Name: Keene Ruth Ann
Position: Chief Legal Officer,
Shares Sold: 6,917, Average Price: $105.55 Market Value: $730,043

Name: Hauwert Ralph
Position: VP
Shares Sold: 6,917, Average Price: $105.54 Market Value: $730,043
Company: Unity Software Inc. (U)
Unity Software Inc. (doing business as Unity Technologies). is an American video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment (OTEE) and changed its name in 2007. Unity Technologies is best known for the development of Unity; a licensed game engine used to create video games and other applications. As of 2020, Unity Technologies has undergone significant growth despite reporting financial losses for every year since its founding in 2004.

Unity Software Inc. operates a real-time 3D development platform. Its platform provides software solutions to create, run, and monetize interactive, real-time 2D and 3D content for mobile phones, tablets, PCs, consoles, and augmented and virtual reality devices. The company offers its solutions directly through its online store and field sales operations in North America, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Singapore, and South Korea and indirectly through independent distributors and resellers worldwide. The company was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Ruth Ann Keene is the Sr. VP, Chief Legal Officer, Gen. Counsel & Corp. Sec. Ms has made over eight trades of the Unity Software stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, she exercised 7,000 units of U stock worth $25,830 on 9 July 2021. The most extensive trade she’s ever made was exercising 40,968 units of Unity Software stock on 16 November 2020, worth over $151,172. On average, Ms trades about 10,441 units every 26 days since 2020. As of 9 July 2021, she still owns at least  77,121 units of Unity Software stock.

Hauwert Ralph serves as Vice President of the Company. Ralph has made over 7 trades of the Unity Software stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently Ralph exercised 6,917 units of U stock worth $11,828 on 9 July 2021. The largest trade Ralph’s ever made was exercising 18,000 units of Unity Software stock on 16 November 2020 worth over $36,000. On average, Ralph trades about 7,438 units every 29 days since 2020. As of 9 July 2021 Ralph still owns at least  134,738 units of Unity Software stock.

Opinion: Normally insiders selling stock 50% below its recent price is a bearish indicator. I’m not sure this is the case with gaming developer Unity Software. You have got to scratch your head on this from Fly on the Wall, “Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Cost initiated coverage of Unity Software with an Equal Weight rating and $115 price target. While bullish on Unity’s game engine and secular tailwinds and also positive on its ad network through recent privacy changes, Cost thinks outperformance of the shares may depend on engine adoption beyond gaming, which he views as “too early to underwrite.”

This is another example of it matters what you pay for something.  Unity is growing like a weed but yet makes no money. That’s what makes this market so infuriating to me and ultimately potentially very dangerous.  $26 billion dollar market companies routinely make no money.  When the reckoning comes, we are going to see a lot of people lose a lot of money. Earnings on August 10th will be underwhelming but revenue growth will make some analysts swoon. This one has fallen too sharply so I would not short it. Wait for a possible earnings bounce and then fade it.

 

Name: John Richard Satori Capital
Position: CFO
Shares Sold: 36,000, Average Price: $66.92, Market Value: $2,409,115
Company: Lovesac Co (LOVE)
Based in Stamford, Connecticut, The Lovesac Company is a technology-driven company that designs, manufactures, and sells unique, high-quality furniture derived through its proprietary ‘Designed for Life’ approach, which results in products that are built to last a lifetime and designed to evolve as its customers’ lives do. Its current product offering comprises modular couches called Sactionals, premium foam bean bag chairs called Sacs, and their associated home decor accessories. Innovation is at the center of its design philosophy, with all of its core products protected by a robust portfolio of utility patents. The company markets and sells its products primarily online directly at www.lovesac.com, supported by direct-to-consumer touch-feel points in the form of its showrooms as well as through shop-in-shops and pop-up-shops with third party retailers.

At Lovesac, They’re committed to helping people fill their homes with Total comfort. That means having furniture that can evolve along with them as life unfolds. From Sactionals – The World’s Most Adaptable CouchTM to Sacs – The World’s Most Comfortable SeatTM, Lovesac products provide peace of mind where others can’t. Their products can adapt to fit almost any space and style and look like new forever. This enables a new way of living, where people can continue to invest in, add to, and evolve their furniture instead of adding it to the landfill—which is good for families and our environment.

Capital has made over seven trades of the Lovesac stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Capital sold 5,900 units of LOVE stock worth $387,807 on 14 July 2021. The most considerable trade Capital’s ever made was selling 195,078 units of Lovesac stock on 11 December 2020 worth over $7,840,185. On average, Capital trades about 51,199 units every 27 days since 2020. As of 14 July 2021, Capital still owns at least 905,357 units of Lovesac stock.

Opinion: I remember when insiders were buying this stock at $12 and $14 in January of 2020 and 2019. Now they have been selling with abandon. I recommended following them then, Lovesac might be love shack.  I’m recommending follow them now.

 

Name: Crockett Todd
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 254,906, Average Price: $54.05 Market Value: $13,778,562

Name: Mironov Jason
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 254,906, Average Price: $54.05, Market Value:$13,778,562

Name: TA Atlantic & Pacific VII-B L.P
Position: Director 10% Owner
Shares Sold: 254,906, Average Price: $54.05 Market Value: $13,778,562

Name: Brown Kirk Norman
Position: 10% Owner
Shares Sold: 145,499, Average Price : $52.81, Market Value: $2,530,816

Name: DO Holdings (WA) LLC
Position: 10% Owner
Shares Sold: 108,939, Average Price: $51.74, Market Value: $2,181,455

Name: Hays Joseph Christopher
Position: COO
Shares Sold: 13,836, Average Price: $51.42, Market Value: $711,428
Company: ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (ZI)
ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. is an American subscription-based software as a service (SaaS) company based in Vancouver, Washington, that sells access to its database of information about business people and companies to sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals.ZoomInfo is a go-to-market intelligence platform for B2B sales and marketing teams. The integrated cloud-based platform provides sellers and marketers with comprehensive information to help them find potential new customers.

The company’s platform helps sales and marketing professionals to identify the target customers, pinpoint the right decision-makers, obtain continually updated predictive lead and company scoring, monitor buying signals and other attributes of target companies, craft the right message, engage via automated sales tools, and track progress through the deal cycle. Its customers operate in various industry verticals, including software, business services, manufacturing, telecommunications, financial services and insurance, retail, media and internet, transportation, education, hospitality, healthcare, and real estate, as well as global enterprises, mid-market companies, and small and medium-sized businesses. The company was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Washington.

Crockett Todd is a Director of ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. Todd has made over 22 trades of the ZoomInfo Technologies stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Todd sold 254,906 units of ZI stock worth $13,777,669 on 13 July 2021. The most extensive trade Todd’s ever made was selling 8,197,378 units of ZoomInfo Technologies stock on 3 June 2020, worth over $293,466,132. On average, Todd trades about 919,095 units every 17 days since 2020.

Jason Mironov is a Managing Director in TA’s Menlo Park office, focusing on investments in business, financial, technology-enabled, and other services companies in North America. He serves on the Board of Directors of Backstage, Beacon, Conservice, Procare Software, and ZoomInfo (Nasdaq: ZI) and formerly served on the Board of Plusgrade. Before joining TA in 2012, Mr. Mironov was an Associate at Spectrum Equity Investors. Also, he worked in the Investment Banking Division of JP Morgan and at Technology Crossover Ventures. 

Atlantic has made over 20 trades of the ZoomInfo Technologies stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Atlantic sold 254,906 units of ZI stock worth $13,777,669 on 13 July 2021. The most extensive trade Atlantic’s ever made was selling 8,197,378 units of ZoomInfo Technologies stock on 3 June 2020 worth over $293,466,132. On average, Atlantic trades about 1,089,812 units every 20 days since 2020.

Brown Kirk Norman is a 10% owner of ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. Kirk has made over ten trades of the ZoomInfo Technologies stock since 2021, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Kirk sold 108,939 units of ZI stock worth $5,636,504 on 2 July 2021. The most significant trade Kirk’s ever made was selling 494,000 units of ZoomInfo Technologies stock on 3 March 2021, worth over $24,541,920. On average, Kirk trades about 232,450 units every 12 days since 2021.

Hays Joseph Christopher is a COO of ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. Joseph has made over 14 trades of the ZoomInfo Technologies stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Joseph exercised 15,000 units of ZI stock worth $60,000 on 8 July 2021. The most significant trade Joseph’s ever made was exercising 50,000 units of ZoomInfo Technologies stock on 5 February 2021, worth over $200,000. On average, Joseph trades about 15,620 units every 15 days from 2020. As of 8 July 2021, Joseph still owns at least 15,000 units of ZoomInfo Technologies stock.

Opinion: This is what Dun and Bradstreet should have been. Private equity, hedge funds, and insiders are unloading. These are smart investors and if they can’t find anything better to do with their money, I’m with the smart money here and would sell into any strength.

 

Name: Siebel Thomas M
Position: CEO 10% Owner
Shares Sold: 254,906, Average Price : $53.65 Market Value: $35,803,283
Company : C3.ai Inc. (AI)
C3 AI is a leading enterprise AI software provider for accelerating digital transformation. The proven C3 AI Suite provides comprehensive services to build enterprise-scale AI applications more efficiently and cost-effectively than alternative approaches. The C3 AI Suite supports the value chain in any industry with prebuilt, configurable, high-value AI applications for predictive maintenance, fraud detection, sensor network health, supply network optimization, energy management, anti-money laundering, and customer engagement.

Mr. Siebel is the company’s founder and has served as the Chairman of the board of directors since January 2009 and as their Chief Executive Officer since July 2011. Before founding their company, Mr. Siebel founded and served as the Chief Executive Officer of Siebel Systems, a global CRM software company, from 1993 until it merged with Oracle Corporation in January 2006. Mr. Siebel served in various leadership positions with Oracle Corporation from January 1984 to September 1990. 

Opinion: This is the next act and probably last for enterprise software godfather, Tom Siebel. I can’t make too much of it really. He’s worth $4 billion and maybe this is a charitable donation. I’m not a buyer or seller at this point.

 

Name: Dodge R Stanton
Position: Chief Legal Officer
Shares Sold: 50,588, Average Price: $50.03, Market Value: $2,530,816

Name: Kalish Matthew
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 250,001, Average Price: $48.70, Market Value: $12,173,831

Name: Liberman Paul
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 250,001, Average Price: $48.22, Market Value: $4,098,624
Company: DraftKings Inc. (DKNG)
DraftKings Inc. operates as a digital sports entertainment and gaming company in the United States. It operates through two segments, Business-to-Consumer and Business-to-Business. The company provides users with daily sports, sports betting, and iGaming opportunities. It is also involved in the design, development, and licensing of sports betting and casino gaming platform software for online and retail sportsbook and casino gaming products. The company distributes its product offerings through various channels, including traditional websites, direct app downloads, and direct-to-consumer digital platforms. DraftKings Inc. is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

DraftKings is an American daily fantasy sports contest and sports betting operator. The company allows users to enter daily and weekly fantasy sports-related contests and win money based on individual player performances in five major American sports (MLB, the NHL, the NFL, the NBA, and the PGA), Premier League and UEFA Champions League soccer, NASCAR auto racing, Canadian Football League, the XFL, mixed martial arts (MMA) and Tennis.

Stanton serves as Chief Legal Officer of DraftKings Inc., the world’s largest daily fantasy sports platform. Stanton is responsible for all legal and government affairs for DraftKings and oversees Corporate Communications. Before DraftKings, Stanton served as Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH), a Fortune 200 satellite TV provider with more than 14.5 million subscribers nationwide. Stanton has received many accolades for his accomplishments in the legal field, including the Legal 500 – GC Powerlist: the United States 2019, recognizing the 500 most influential in-house lawyers in the United States (2019); the National Law Journal – America’s 50 Outstanding General Counsel, identifying general counsel that serve as models inside their companies and in their communities

Matthew Kalish is President, DraftKings North America. Mr. Kalish co-founded DraftKings and served as its Chief Revenue Officer from 2014 until December 2019. In December 2019, Mr. Kalish was appointed President, DraftKings North America. As Chief Revenue Officer, Mr. Kalish’s purview has grown consistently to oversee the performance of DraftKings’ DFS, Sportsbook, and gaming offerings. He leads DraftKings’ operations, marketing, analytics, and customer experience departments. Mr. Kalish focuses on developing and managing high-performing offerings and promotions that users love and bringing those offerings to market to drive user base growth and loyalty. The innovation under Mr. Kalish’s guidance has helped DraftKings grow its customer base significantly.

Paul Liberman is our President, Global Technology and Product. Mr. Liberman co-founded DraftKings in December 2011 and served as its Chief Operations Officer (“COO”) from 2015 to December 2019. In December 2019, Mr. Liberman was appointed President, Global Technology and Product. He oversees our product development while leading efforts in maintaining the company’s current product set. He acted as DraftKings’ Chief Technology Officer from 2011 to 2013 and subsequently served as its Chief Marketing Officer before moving into his current position as COO. Liberman’s data-driven mindset has been instrumental in growing DraftKings from a small Boston start-up to a digital sports entertainment enterprise.

Opinion: There will likely be a time betting on sports will be legal in most states. It’s a huge market opportunity and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Draftkings was almost out of business but the landmark Supreme Court decision allowing online sports gaming changed everything. Now Draftkins is a Katie Woods ARKK poster child investment. We made money on the long side of this ex SPAC name. I’ve never thought much of the profitability of this industry though. Intense competition in advertising, heaving government taxing loads, and gravitational pull to the lowest fees will always exact pressure on margins.  The proof is in the price action. It’s sold off a lot and due for a bounce.

Name: Topjian Serge
Position: VP
Shares Sold: 10,000, Average Price: $37.20 Market Value: $372,039

Name: Perine Robert
Position: VP
Shares Sold: 10,000, Average Price: $37.20 Market Value $372,001

Name: Nonko Eugene
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 42,055, Average Price: $36.66 Market Value: $1,541,545

Name: Sinanyan Tigran
Shares Sold: 6,000, Average Price : $36.66 Market Value: $223,219

Name: Yi Steven
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 45,000, Average Price: $36.54 Market Value: $1,644,352

Name: Yeh Kuanling Amy
Position: SVP of Technology
Shares Sold: 9,000, Average Price: $35.87 Market Value: $322,866
Company: MediaAlpha Inc. (MAX)
The company generates customer acquisition leads for insurance carriers through a digital platform. MediaAlpha was founded on a simple premise: Be transparent, and people will reward you with their trust. They give partners an unprecedented level of insight into the consumers they want to reach. It allows them to target more effectively, invest more efficiently, and grow their businesses more profitably. Their technology platform provides the transparency needed to maximize the value of every interaction. The foundation of their success is our company culture. They’re a small, tight-knit group, and they’ve invested in each other’s success. Personal development is critical to their team’s engagement and retention, and they continually invest in supporting their core values of open-mindedness, intellectual curiosity, honesty, and humility. It has resulted in a growth-minded team with exceptionally low turnover, committed to building great products and the long-term success of our partners.

MediaAlpha uses technology and data science to help businesses optimize their customer acquisition efforts. Their customer acquisition solutions are designed to reach consumers shopping within high-consideration categories such as property & casualty insurance, health, and life insurance, personal finance, travel, education, and more. Whether you’re looking to generate demand or get the most from the shoppers that come to you, They can help you maximize the value of every consumer interaction

Topjian Serge is the Vice President of the company. Serge has made over seven trades of the MediaAlpha stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Serge sold 10,000 units of MAX stock worth $372,000 on 7 July 2021. The most significant trade Serge ever made was selling 30,028 units of MediaAlpha stock on 30 October 2020, worth over $975,009. On average, Serge trades about 15,269 units every 36 days since 2020. As of 7 July 2021, Serge still owns at least  3,657 units of MediaAlpha stock.

Perine Robert is Vice President of the company. Robert has made over seven trades of the MediaAlpha stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Robert sold 10,000 units of MAX stock worth $372,000 on 7 July 2021. The most significant trade Robert’s ever made was exercising 24,000 units of MediaAlpha stock on 1 July 2021, worth over $828,000. On average, Robert trades about 14,379 units every 36 days since 2020. As of 7 July 2021, Robert still owns at least 14,000 units of MediaAlpha stock.

Nonko Eugene is the Director of the company. Eugene has made over eight trades of the MediaAlpha stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Eugene sold 42,055 units of MAX stock worth $1,541,736 on 7 July 2021. The most extensive trade Eugene’s ever made was selling 846,014 units of MediaAlpha stock on 30 October 2020, worth over $29,492,048. On average, Eugene trades about 268,485 units every 31 days since 2020. As of 7 July 2021, Eugene still owns at least  152,584 units of MediaAlpha stock.

Yi Steven is the Director of the company. Steven has made over eight trades of the MediaAlpha stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Steven sold 45,000 units of MAX stock worth $1,644,300 on 7 July 2021. The most extensive trade Steven’s ever made was selling 846,014 units of MediaAlpha stock on 30 October 2020, worth over $27,893,082. On average, Steven trades about 270,974 units every 31 days since 2020. As of 7 July 2021, Steven still owns at least 132,677 units of MediaAlpha stock.

Yeh Kuanling Amy is the SVP of Technology of the company. Kuanling has made over eight trades of the MediaAlpha stock since 2020, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Kuanling sold 9,000 units of MAX stock worth $322,830 on 9 July 2021. The most extensive trade Kuanling’s ever made was selling 40,044 units of MediaAlpha stock on 30 October 2020, worth over $1,310,240. On average, Kuanling has traded about 17,247 units every 28 days since 2020. As of 9 July 2021, Kuanling still owns at least 12,930 units of MediaAlpha stock.

Opinion: Insiders selling at the low and en masse is pretty sad. This is what I call rats leaving the sinking ship. MAX did a 7M share secondary at $46 on March 19th. Buyers have left in masse first as the stock hasn’t seen that price since. On May 13th they cut guidance and the stock fell 16% the following day. An insurance analyst at Keefe Bruyette proclaimed June 7th the selling was overdone with an outperform rating and a $53 price target. On July 8th the CFO announced his resignation for a better job at a private company. Either that or White Mountain Insurance, a significant shareholder, forced him out. Judging by all the insider selling, the carnage might not be over.

 

Name: Belsky Leah F
Position: Chief Enterprise Officer
Shares Sold: 45,000, Average Price: $40.50 Market Value: $1,822,567

Name: Maggioncalda Jeffrey Nacey
Position: CEO
Shares Sold: 89,634, Average Price : $39.54 Market Value: $3,543,892

Name: Caldbeck Kimberly A
Position: Chief Marketing Officer
Shares Sold: 29,522, Average Price: $38.38 Market Value: $1,132,910
Company: Coursera Inc. (COUR)
Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera in 2012 with a vision of providing life-transforming learning experiences to learners around the world. Today, Coursera is a global online learning platform that offers anyone, anywhere, access to online courses and degrees from leading universities and companies. Coursera received B Corp certification in February 2021, which means that they have a legal duty to their shareholders and positively impact society more broadly as they continue their efforts to reduce barriers to a world-class education for all.

Coursera partners with more than 200 leading universities and companies to bring flexible, affordable, job-relevant online learning to individuals and organizations worldwide. They offer various learning opportunities—from hands-on projects and courses to job-ready certificates and degree programs.

Leah is Chief Enterprise Officer at Coursera. Under Leah’s leadership, Coursera is helping thousands of businesses, governments, and universities reskill their workforce and access a world-class education. Before Coursera, Leah was SVP at Kaltura, an Intel Capital-funded video technology company, where she oversaw enterprise growth, operations, services, and international expansion. Leah began her career at the World Bank, and National Institutes of Health served on President Obama’s Technology Policy Committee and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She also sits on the Board of Engine Advocacy, a leading technology, and startup policy organization that promotes freedom of expression, innovation, and access to knowledge.

Jeff Maggioncalda joined Coursera as CEO in June 2017. He previously served for 18 years as the founding CEO at Financial Engines Inc, co-founded by economist and Nobel Prize winner William Sharpe. Financial Engines overgrew under Jeff’s leadership, providing high-quality online investment advice that has helped millions of people save and prepare for retirement. Jeff has also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and Cornerstone Research and serves as a Director of Silicon Valley Bank, Inc.

Kim Caldbeck is the Chief Marketing Officer at Coursera. Kim joined Coursera in April 2015 as Director of Brand and Product Marketing. Before Coursera, Kim spent five years at Facebook launching many of Facebook’s first consumer marketing campaigns in over 60 global markets. She spent much of her time in the mobile space spearheading Facebook’s internet.org launch to bring the internet to the offline world, leading product marketing for Facebook for Android and Facebook for Every Phone, and developing the Facebook for Android beta program. She also spent two years in business marketing at Facebook, helping advertisers build their brands and businesses in the digital world. Before Facebook, Kim worked in marketing at Apple supporting a network of over 100,000 app developers. She started her career in brand consulting and consumer research at Landor Associates, working with many of the world’s leading brands.

Opinion: I love Coursana and the democratization of learning.  Why not take the best teachers from the best universities and open the classrooms to the world and not the elite few? I just don’t know if they can make any money. With lock-ups expiring, there could be much more selling to come. I’m more inclined to be a buyer and not a seller.  Give me some insiders stepping up to buy this newly minted IPO and I’m all in.

 

Name: Keen Nicholas
Position: Chief Scientific Office
Shares Sold: 10,000, Average Price: $35.00 Market Value: $350,000

Name: Lee Kevin
Position: CEO
Shares Sold: 22,579, Average Price: $34.27 Market Value: $773,838

Name: Bingham Kate
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 44,895, Average Price: $34.00 Market Value: $1,526,467
Company: Bicycle Therapeutics Plc (BCYC)
Bicycle Therapeutics plc, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, develops a class of medicines for underserved diseases by existing therapeutics. Its lead product candidate is BT1718, a bicycle toxin conjugate (BTC) in Phase I/IIa clinical trials targeting tumors that express Membrane Type 1 matrix metalloproteinase. The company’s oncology product candidates also comprise BT5528, a BTC in a Phase I/IIa clinical trial targeting EphA2; BT8009, in preclinical studies targeting Nectin-4; and CD137, an immune cell co-stimulatory molecule that is in the preclinical stage. In addition, it is developing THE-149, a plasma kallikrein inhibitor that completed Phase I clinical trials for the treatment of diabetic macular edema. Further, the company collaborates with pharmaceutical companies and organizations to develop programs in therapeutic areas, such as anti-infective, cardiovascular, ophthalmology, and respiratory indications. Bicycle Therapeutics plc has a clinical trial and license agreement with the Cancer Research Technology Limited and CRUK; research collaboration agreements with AstraZeneca, Sanofi, Oxurion, and the Dementia Discovery Fund; and discovery collaboration and license agreement with Genentech for the discovery and development of Bicycle peptides for multiple immuno-oncology targets. The company was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Cambridge, the United Kingdom.

Nick Keen, Ph.D., is a chief scientific officer of Bicycle Therapeutics. He joined Bicycle from Novartis, where he served as the Cambridge (U.S.) head of oncology research for the past five years. During his tenure at Novartis, Nick was responsible for leading research from essential target identification and drug discovery to enabling early clinical trials. Under his leadership, the group delivered multiple new therapies to the clinic, spanning the range from novel allosteric small molecule inhibitors of previously intractable targets to advanced biologic therapies. Nick’s team was also responsible for publishing many fundamental discoveries in cancer biology and building industry-leading platforms in whole genome-scale target identification, and modeling the diversity of human clinical trials in mice.

Kevin joined Bicycle Therapeutics from Pfizer, where he served as senior vice president and chief scientific officer of the Rare Disease Research Unit. In that role, he held responsibility for more than 20 novel programs across the full spectrum of research and development, established Pfizer’s rare disease strategy, conceptualized and implemented the company’s gene therapy strategy with the creation of the Genetic Medicine Institute, and founded the Rare Disease Research Consortium. Before joining Pfizer, Kevin worked at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). In addition to leading the formation of multiple strategic commercial and academic partnerships, he led epigenetics research and created the EpiNova Discovery Performance Unit. Before joining GSK, he lectured at Warwick University Medical School and founded Cambridge Biotechnology (acquired by Biovitrum) and Neurosolutions.

Kate Bingham is Director in the Bicycle Therapeutics Plc. Kate has made over two trades of the Bicycle Therapeutics plc stock since 2019, according to Form 4 filed with the SEC. Most recently, Kate sold 44,895 units of BCYC stock worth $1,526,430 on 13 July 2021. The largest trade Kate’s ever made was buying 385,715 Bicycle Therapeutics plc stock units on 28 May 2019, worth over $5,400,010. On average, Kate trades about 107,653 units every 194 days since 2019. As of 13 July 2021, Kate still owns at least  38,708 units of Bicycle Therapeutics plc stock.

Opinion: If I was an insider, I’d sell too. Pre-revenue biotechs are a tough game and Bicycle has performed admirably.  There are three Phase 1/2 updates due in 2021. It’s hard to get terrible news on a preliminary Phase 1 but I’m watching this one.

Name: Fleming Ronald
Position: Vice President
Shares Sold: 70,194, Average Price: $21.40 Market Value: $1,501,973

Name: Tomashot Nicholas J
Position: CFO
Shares Sold: 30,400, Average Price: $21.29 Market Value: $647,216
Company: Lazydays Holdings Inc. (LAZY)
Lazydays, The RV Authority, is an iconic brand in the RV industry. Home of the world’s largest recreational vehicle dealership, based on 126 acres outside of Tampa, Florida, Lazydays has nine dealership locations in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, and Tennessee. Lazydays also has a dedicated Service Center location in Texas. Offering the nation’s largest selection of leading RV brands, Lazydays features nearly 3,500 new and pre-owned RVs, more than 400 service bays, and two on-site campgrounds with over 700 RV campsites. In addition, Lazydays RV Accessories & More. Stores offer thousands of accessories and hard-to-find parts at dealership locations. Since 1976, Lazydays has built a reputation for providing an outstanding customer experience with exceptional service and product expertise and being a preferred place to rest and recharge with other RVers. Lazydays consistently provides the best RV purchase, service, and ownership experience, which is why RVers and their families keep returning to Lazydays year after year.

Ron Fleming, their Vice President, National General Manager, oversees all dealership operations. Mr. Fleming’s career includes over thirty-five years in the RV industry. Mr. Fleming joined Lazydays in 2013 as the Vice President, General Manager of the Tampa dealership, and was promoted to the Vice President, National General Manager in 2017. Before joining Lazydays, Mr. Fleming was the Director of Sales for Alliance Coach RV, where he supervised all sales, F&I, and internet activity. Mr. Fleming owned and operated Travel Country RV Center from 1996 to 2011. Fleming started his career with Giant Recreation World in 1980, where he held various positions, including Executive Vice President when he left in 1996.

Nicholas Tomashot, Chief Financial Officer, oversees Lazydays’ financial, information technology, and human resources operations. Mr. Tomashot has more than 30 years of financial management experience. He has an extensive background in corporate finance, financial planning and analysis, cost analysis and business intelligence, investor relations, strategic planning, and operational efficiency. Before joining Lazydays, Mr. Tomashot was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the National Service Center of US Foods. Before US Foods, he was Chief Financial Officer at Pinnacle Data Systems, Inc., an NYSE-traded technology repair and reverse logistics service provider.

Opinion: The RV phenomenon induced by the Pandemic is officially over.  Demand has been pulled forward and it’s time to see what revenues really look like. At a forward P.E of 9.63 and Price to Free Cash ratio of just 2.19, it’s hard to say this is overvalued but clearly, the company and industry have been in an environment as good as it can get. The company raised guidance on July 13th and the stock has gone done on good news.

Name: Garcia Ernest C
Position: Verde Investments Inc 10% Owner
Shares Sold: 25,541, Average Price: $325.29, Market Value: $83,08,126

Name: Keeton Ryan S
Position: Chief Brand Officer
Shares Sold: 10,000, Average Price Paid: $312.13, Cost: $3,121,300
Company : Carvana Co. (CVNA)
“We sell cars, but we’re not car salespeople,” is a popular refrain at Carvana. Instead, They provide a seamless online car buying experience for customers from coast to coast. Carvana allows customers to browse, finance, and purchase more than 15,000 vehicles from the comfort of home or on the go via their mobile device, while also offering the convenience of selling your car to them without ever having to step foot inside a dealership. Customers who purchase with Carvana enjoy the peace of mind that comes with their 7-day return policy, and the sense of security in knowing that each and every Carvana vehicle is Carvana Certified, having passed a rigorous 150-point inspection and has never been in a reported accident. And with the option to choose as-soon-as next-day delivery or pick up from one of their signature Car Vending Machines, the days of spending a Saturday at the dealership are officially over! Carvana opened its first iteration of a car vending machine. In 2015, a fully automated, coin-operated version of the signature car vending machine opened in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2017 Carvana acquired rival automotive startup Carlypso to enhance vehicle data and analytical tools. In April 2018, Carvana spent $22 million to acquire Mark Cuban-backed Car360 for its smartphone technology for taking vehicle photos with 3D computer vision, machine learning, and augmented reality.

Ernest Garcia III serves as Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Mr. Garcia is also Chairman of the Carvana Co. Board. Before founding Carvana, Mr. Garcia held various roles at DriveTime from January 2007 to January 2013. From January 2007 to December 2008, he served as a financial strategist. He was a managing director of corporate finance from December 2008 to November 2009. From November 2009 until January 2013, he served as a vice president and treasurer, and director of quantitative analytics. As director of quantitative analytics, Mr. Garcia was responsible for the firm’s ongoing development of consumer credit scoring models and its utilization of those tools in retail-vehicle-sales deal structuring and vehicle-price optimization.

Ryan S. Keeton serves as Chief Brand Officer of the Company. Before joining Carvana, Mr. Keeton was a principal at the Montero Group, a strategic consultancy firm, from 2010 to 2012. He advised global public and private companies on strategic and business initiatives. From 2008 to 2010, Mr. Keeton served as director of strategic marketing for George P. Johnson, a global marketing agency.

Opinion:

Name: Dageville Benoit
Position: President
Shares Sold: 73,636, Average Price: $251.69, Market Value: $18,533,387

Name: Garrett Mark
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 3,459, Average Price: $254.59, Market Value: $880,627

Name: Slootman Frank
Position: CEO Chairman
Shares Sold: 31,546,  Average Price: $254.37, Market Value: $8,024,277
Company: Snowflake Inc. (SNOW)
Snowflake Inc. is a cloud computing-based data warehousing company based in Bozeman, Montana. It was founded in July 2012 and was publicly launched in October 2014 after two years in stealth mode. The company’s name was chosen as a tribute to the founders’ love of winter sports. Snowflake delivers the Data Cloud — a global network where thousands of organizations mobilize data with near-unlimited scale, concurrency, and performance. Inside the Data Cloud, organizations unite their siloed data, quickly discover and securely share governed data, and execute diverse analytic workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single and seamless experience across multiple public clouds. Snowflake’s platform is the engine that powers and provides access to the Data Cloud, creating a solution for data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, data science, data application development, and data sharing. Join Snowflake customers, partners, and data providers already taking their businesses to new frontiers in the Data Cloud.

Mark brings nearly 40 years of experience to Snowflake as an executive leader, an expert in accounting and financial management, and a visionary in growing and transforming technology companies. Mark joined Adobe in 2007 as Executive Vice President and CFO, leading Adobe’s worldwide finance, operations, and corporate development activities, including investor relations, procurement, global supply chain and order management, and corporate strategy and strategic partnerships. He retired from Adobe in April 2018. Before Adobe, Mark held senior leadership positions at Documentum and EMC. As Executive Vice President and CFO, Mark co-led Documentum’s $1.7 billion sales to EMC. Following the sale, he became Senior Vice President and CFO of EMC’s Software Group.

Benoit co-founded Snowflake and currently serves as President of the Product division. Benoit is a leading expert in parallel execution and self-tuning database systems. Before founding Snowflake, Benoit was with Oracle for over ten years as a lead architect for parallel execution in Oracle RAC and a key architect in the SQL Manageability group. Before Oracle, Benoit worked at Bull Information Systems. He helped define the architecture and lead database performance efforts for Bull’s parallel systems.

Frank Slootman currently serves as Chairman and CEO at Snowflake. Frank has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the enterprise software industry. Mr. Slootman served as CEO and President of ServiceNow from 2011 to 2017, taking the organization from around $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. Before that, Frank served as President of the Backup Recovery Systems Division at EMC following the acquisition of Data Domain Corporation/Data Domain, Inc., where he served as the Chief Executive Officer and President, leading the company through an IPO to its acquisition by EMC for $2.4B. Slootman holds.

Opinion:

 

Name: Hobbs Eric
Position: CEO
Shares Sold: 15,500, Average Price: $47.07, Market Value: $7,29,659

Name: Breinlinger Keith
Position: CTO
Shares Sold: 8,250, Average Price: $46.07, Market Value: $380,076
Company: Berkeley Lights Inc. (BLI)
Berkeley Lights is a leading Digital Cell Biology company focused on enabling and accelerating the rapid development and commercialization of biotherapeutics and other cell-based products for their customers. The Berkeley Lights Platform captures deep phenotypic, functional, and genotypic information for thousands of single cells in parallel and can also deliver the live biology customers desire in the form of the best cells. Their platform is a fully integrated, end-to-end solution, comprising proprietary consumables, including their OptoSelect™ chips and reagent kits, advanced automation systems, and application software. They developed the Berkeley Lights Platform to provide the most advanced environment for rapid functional characterization of single cells at scale, the goal of which is to establish an industry standard for their customers throughout their cell-based product value chain.

Eric joined Berkeley Lights in May 2013 and rose to the CEO rank in 2017.  Under Eric’s guidance, the Berkeley Lights team realized nearly a 10-fold  revenue increase over two years, raised $95 million in funding, released multiple new products, was named the top 10 most innovative companies in BioTech, and dramatically transformed the company culture.  Before serving as CEO, Eric led Berkeley Lights’ Consumable Organization and Operations and designed, developed, and launched multiple product architectures at FormFactor Inc. as a senior member of R&D, Operations, and Marketing organizations. He holds more than 50 U.S. and international patents. 

Keith leads the development team (including biology, software, hardware, applications, chips, reagents, and program management), and with the team, drive the advancement of the Berkeley Lights Platform and serves as the Chief Technology Officer. Before joining Berkeley Lights, Keith worked in the semiconductor equipment industry for 17 years at Teradyne and FormFactor.  At Formfactor, he led the development of the Katana platform and the SmartMatrix and TouchMatrix architectures. Before that, he helped develop the Ultraflex interface and worked on the various manipulator and interconnect challenges. He received his Ph.D., MS, and BS from MIT in Mechanical Engineering focused on Precision Machine Design and MEMS.

Opinion:

 

Name: Mcchord Austin
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 68,708, Average Price: $27.62, Market Value: $1,897,715

Name: Singh Sanjay Kumar
Position: Chief Revenue Officer
Shares Sold: 10,000, Average Price: $27.11, Market Value: $271,100
Company: Datto Holding Corp. (MSP)
As the world’s leading provider of cloud-based software and security solutions purpose-built for delivery by managed service providers (MSPs), Datto believes there is no limit to what small and medium businesses (SMBs) can achieve with the right technology. Datto’s proven Unified Continuity, Networking, and Business Management solutions drive cyber resilience, efficiency, and growth for MSPs. Delivered via an integrated platform, Datto’s solutions help its global ecosystem of MSP partners serve over one million businesses worldwide. Datto’s solutions defend against costly downtime and data loss in servers, virtual machines, cloud applications, or anywhere data resides, from proactive, dynamic detection and prevention to fast, flexible recovery from cyber incidents. Since its founding in 2007, Datto has won numerous awards for its product excellence, superior technical support, rapid growth, and for fostering an outstanding workplace. With headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut, Datto has global offices in Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.

Austin McChord founded Datto, Inc. in 2007 and served as Datto’s Chief Executive Officer from its founding until October 2018. Mr. McChord was elected as our director in December of 2017, where he still serves today. From January through November 2019, Mr. McChord served as a Venture Partner of General Catalyst, a venture capital firm based in Massachusetts. Mr. McChord earned his bachelor’s degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2009 and currently serves on its Board of trustees. We believe Mr. McChord is qualified to serve as a member of our Board because of his extensive experience building and leading the business and his insight into the technology and the MSP channel as Datto’s founder and former CEO.

Sanjay Singh joined Datto in May 2019. Before joining Datto, Singh held Chief Operating Officer and board member of Unbxd, Inc. He also previously worked at Akamai Technologies, holding various positions including Senior Vice President Global Operations and Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Asia Pacific and Japan. 

Opinion:

 

Name: Barker Geoffrey T
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 13,500, Average Price: $71.76, Market Value: $968,816

Name: Gomez Elena
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 5,000, Average Price: $71.48, Market Value: $357,400
Company: Smartsheet Inc. (SMAR)
Smartsheet Inc. is a publicly-listed company that develops and markets the Smartsheet application. As of 2019, it had 1588 employees and is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. The company was founded in the summer of 2006, shortly after co-founder Brent Frei sold his previous company, Onyx Software. Initially, it was primarily funded by Frei. About a year after its founding, Smartsheet had raised $4 million in funding and had just nine employees. By early 2012 it had raised $8.2 million in funding over three rounds and hired its first salesperson.

Smartsheet (NYSE: SMAR) is the enterprise platform for dynamic work. By aligning people and technology to move faster and drive innovation, Smartsheet enables its millions of users to achieve more. Backed by enterprise-grade security, Smartsheet is used by more than 75% of the companies in the Fortune 500 to implement, manage, and automate processes across a broad array of departments and use cases.

Geoffrey T. Barker is Executive Director and a co-founder of RPX Corp and served as its Chief Operating Officer until mid-2012. Before co-founding RPX, Geoffrey Barker was Vice President, Licensing at Intellectual Ventures, where he and Geoffrey Amster shared responsibility for the portfolio development and licensing strategy of IV’s software. portfolio. Previously, Geoffrey Barker served as founder, Chairman, and CEO of Vigilos, Inc., which provides a platform for controlling and managing the physical security systems of large enterprises.

Elena Gomez is the chief financial officer of Toast, a cloud-based restaurant management platform. Before joining Toast, Elena served as the chief financial officer of Zendesk from 2016 to 2021. Before that, Elena led the finance and strategy team for Salesforce’s go-to-market organizations. During her six years at Salesforce, she helped build a world-class finance operation to help support its hyper-growth as it moved up-market. Elena has built a track record of strategic financial leadership and accomplishment throughout her two-decade career in finance at Fortune 500 companies, including Visa and Charles Schwab. Elena currently serves as a member of the board of directors of PagerDuty, Inc.

Opinion:  Good product, lots of competition and overpriced stock.

 

Name: Hughes Michael
Position: Chief Revenue Officer
Shares Sold: 100,000, Average Price: $23.50, Market Value: $2,350,000

Name: Sidle Eric
Position: Senior Vice President, Engineering
Shares Sold: 17,000, Average Price: $23.50, Market Value: $399,500

Name: Burghardt Christopher
Position: Managing Director
Shares Sold: 85,000, Average Price: $23.50, Market Value: $1,997,500

Name: Wagoner G Richard
Position: JR Director
Shares Sold: 31,300, Average Price: $23.50, Market Value: $735,550

Name: Romano Pasquale
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 315,000, Average Price: $23.50, Market Value: $7,402,500

Name: Linse Michael
Position: Director
Shares Sold: 6,831,700, Average Price: $23.50, Market Value: 160,544,950
Company: ChargePoint Holdings Inc. (CHPT)
ChargePoint (formerly Coulomb Technologies) is an American electric vehicle infrastructure company based in Campbell, California. ChargePoint operates the most extensive online network of independently owned EV charging stations operating in 14 countries and makes the technology used in it. They’re the only network with integrated hardware, cloud services, and support portfolio, delivering the smoothest possible experience for all businesses and drivers. When everything works together, EV charging is better for everyone.

It “designs, develops and manufactures hardware and software solutions” for electric vehicles at large. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, its business model involves selling “its hardware and software to property owners, building a searchable network of charging stations for drivers, and maintaining individual stations.

Michael Hughes is an accomplished sales leader with 25 years of experience in strategic planning, sales, services, marketing, business, organizational development, product leadership, operations, and market-making in early-stage and established technology companies. At ChargePoint, Hughes leads global sales, mobility ecosystem relationships, and business development functions. Before joining ChargePoint, he spent nine years at Barracuda Networks, serving as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Services and scaling the company to $500 million in revenue and an initial public offering. 

Eric Sidle is Senior Vice President of Engineering at ChargePoint, where he leads and grows all aspects of ChargePoint’s engineering organization and the company’s global R&D laboratories. Eric has more than 20 years of experience in technology and was most recently Senior Director of Autonomous Driving Hardware at electric vehicle manufacturer NIO, where he led teams responsible for the design and production of hardware, manufacturing, and validation as well as fleet operations. Before NIO, he held leadership positions at Apple, Hewlett Packard, and Raytheon.

Christopher Burghardt is ChargePoint’s Managing Director for Europe, responsible for leading all aspects of the company’s European business and policy efforts in the region. Most recently, the head of policy and communications, EMEA, for ride-sharing app Uber, Christopher, previously led global and emerging market expansion at First Solar, a provider of solar panels and utility-scale PV power plants. Before joining First Solar, Christopher was Vice President for Corporate Affairs for Western Europe at Anheuser-Busch InBev and a Vice President for Business Development and Marketing EMEA at Hill & Knowlton.

G. Richard (Rick) Wagoner, Jr., built a 30-year career at GM, where he served as Chairman and CEO for several years, before which he was President and CEO. He held many other senior leadership positions at GM, including President and Chief Operating Officer, President of North American Operations, Chief Financial Officer and head of worldwide purchasing, President of General Motors do Brasil, and CFO of GM Europe. Rick’s current business activities include serving on the board of directors for Graham Holdings, Invesco, and Aleris Corporation.

Pasquale Romano is President and CEO of ChargePoint and a member of the company’s board of directors. Pasquale brings more than 25 years of technology industry leadership and executive management experience to the company. He co-founded the networking company 2Wire, which Pace plc acquired. Previously, Pasquale held multiple positions in marketing and engineering at Polycom. Before that, he co-founded Fluent, Inc., a digital video networking company, where he served as a chief architect until the company was sold to Novell Corporation.

Michael Linse is the founder and Managing Director of Linse Capital, a firm that invests in late-stage technology companies in transportation. Before founding Linse Capital, Michael spent seven years as a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), where he invested in sustainable growth businesses like ChargePoint, Proterra, uShip, Telogis, INRIX, Friedola, HYLA, and Adaptive. Before joining KPCB, Michael worked at Goldman Sachs for more than a decade, most recently as the Managing Director of the alternative energy investing team.

Opinion: We made a lot of money on ChargePoint last year. I wrote at the time  That Kyle Bass was buying ChargePoint and we were too.  I don’t know if he still owns 105 of the Company but we sold out at $39 per share.   Providing an electric charging infrastructure seems like a no-brainer idea.  Tesla wouldn’t be where it was without it.  The reality is that the low-cost provider for this service is the regulated utility company you pay your monthly power bill to.  ChargePoint had to sue Duke power to be even in the game.  We think this is a tough business with no obvious route to profits. Given that Tesla just announced they were opening up their vast charging network to all comers, it just got a lot tougher. I’m surprised that ChargePoint didn’t crash on that news but maybe it takes time for bad business models in bull markets to take shape.

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Insiders sell the stock for many reasons, but they generally buy for just one – to make money. You’ve always heard the best information is inside information.  Everyone who has any experience at all in the stock market pays close attention to what insiders are doing.  After all, who knows a business better than the people running it?  Officers, directors, and 10% owners are required to inform the public through a Form 4 Filing any transaction, buy, sell, exercise, or any other transaction with 48 hours of doing so. This info is available for free from the SEC’s Web site, Edgar, although we subscribe to SECForm4  as they provide a way to manage and make sense of the vast realms of data.  I’ve tried a lot of vendors and SECForm4 is one of the most customer-friendly and responsive I’ve used.

We publish a subscription newsletter called The Insiders Report.  We offer a free 30-day trial so you have nothing to lose by trying it out. Be sure to carefully read the TERMS OF SERVICE.

Another source for insider buying and selling and much more is FinViz Elite. FinViz stands for financial visualization and they do an amazing job of providing reams of data and the tools to help you get to the bottom of it, the information that helps me make informed decisions and probable outcomes. I’ve been using their site for years and it only gets better over time.  We also like Briefing.com and The Fly on the Wall and read them every day.  Briefing is great for calendars like earnings dates and economic headlines. Fly on the Wall does so many things it’s hard to even describe other than a poor man’s Bloomberg but a lot easier to use.

This is as close to “insider information” that an ordinary investor is likely to see- and it’s entirely legal. 

BEWARE– Following insiders can be hazardous to your financial health unless you know what you are doing.  Unlike the raw, unfiltered data, The Insiders Fund blog informs you of the purchases that count, the ones that are just window dressing into deceiving the public that all is hunky-dory, and those that are just flat out other people’s money and should be just discarded like bad fish. As a rule, we only look at material amounts of money, $200 thousand or more, as anything less could just be window dressing.

The bar is different from selling because the natural state of management is to be sellers. This is because most companies provide significant amounts of management compensation packages as stock and options. Therefore, with selling, we analyze for unusual patterns, such as insiders selling 25 percent or more of their holdings or multiple insiders selling near 52-week lows. Another red flag is large planned sale programs that start without warning. Unfortunately, the public information disclosure requirements about these programs referred to as Rule 10b5-1 are horrendously poor. Also planned sales that just pop up out of nowhere are basically sales and are seeking cover under the Sarbanes Oxley corporate welfare clause. I also generally ignore 10 percent shareholders as they tend to be OPM (other people’s money) and perhaps not the smart money we are trying to read the tea leaves on.

Of course, insiders can also be wrong about their Company’s prospects. Don’t let anyone fool you into believing they never make mistakes.  No one tracks and analyzes insider behavior better than us. We’ve been doing it religiously since 2001 when I quit being an insider myself and devoted myself full time to managing my personal investments. They can easily be wrong about how much others will value them, and in many cases, maybe most cases have no better idea about what the future may hold than you or me.  In short, you can lose money following them.  We have and we curse aloud, what were they thinking!  Needless to say, past good fortune is no guarantee of future success. We may own positions, long or short, in any of these names and are under no obligation to disclose that. We welcome your comments on our analysis.

This blog is solely for educational purposes and the author’s own amusement.  Investing with The Insiders Fund is for qualified investors and by Prospectus only. Nothing herein should be construed otherwise.  THE INSIDERS FUND invests in companies at or near prices that management has been willing to invest significant amounts of their own money in.  If you would like to hear more about how you can get involved with the Insiders Fund, please schedule some time on my calendar. 

Prosperous Trading,

Harvey Sax

The Insiders Fund was the 4th best long-short equity fund in the world in 2019, 4th Best in November 2020, 4th Best in January 2021 (I kid you not)