Satya Nadella cashes in on Microsoft's success

Microsoft’s share price has never been higher, which would make it a good time for cautious investors to sell some shares, in case this is the peak for the company.

The signal when the CEO of the company does this, however, is a bit unfortunate, which makes Satya Nadella’s sale of 328,000 shares of Microsoft stock valued at $35.9 million somewhat worrying.

Nadella sold the shares to divest his holdings for financial planning purposes, and from here on out plans to set up a regular schedule of sales over the next year which will result in him selling something less than half of his Microsoft holdings.

Nadella will not be controlling the timing of those sales, but it appears he did initiate the process this week.  He last sold some of his Microsoft shares two years ago, then netting only $8.3 million for selling 143,000 shares. Since then Microsoft’s share price has nearly doubled, suggesting investors have somewhat more confidence in the future performance of the company than its CEO.

In a statement, however, Microsoft notes:

“The stock divestitures made today were for personal financial planning and diversification reasons. Satya is committed to the continued success of the company and his holdings significantly exceed the holding requirements set by the Microsoft Board of Directors.”

Via Fortune.com