Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) has been on fire, so much that two insiders decided to stuff their holiday stockings with about $23 million in stock sales.

Chairman and CEO John Martin sold 282,242 shares from options for $20.96 million on December 2. The price of $74.26 versus a 52-week trading range of $35.68 to $76.11. Gilead is the first biotech to pass the $100 billion market value mark and this sale was effectively close to all-time highs. We would point out that it was part of a 10b5-1 scheduled insider sale plan. The second sale was from VP Gregg Alton for 30,000 for $2.22 million. These were also via options and an existing 105b-1 plan.

Gilead was also featured as our own top growth engine among large cap biotechs when it comes to expected 2014 revenue growth. Its hepatitis C treatment may even bring more growth than we had originally projected in 2014 and in 2015.

Gilead shares were down 3% at $72.90 in late-Tuesday trading and profit taking along with insider selling seems to be why. We would point out that Gilead’s consensus price target from the Thomson Reuters consensus is now up at $84.58.

Stay tuned going into year-end. We will be featuring more instances of insider selling where millions of dollars are raised by insiders cashing in their chips at or close to all-time highs.

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