VIVUS Insider Selling Meets Profit-Taking (VVUS)

We have warned that VIVUS Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS) would be smart to sell some shares to raise additional capital ahead of its pending FDA decision in April.  Well, some shares sales were sold, but this was from insiders.  CEO Leland Wilson sold several batches of shares from exercised stock options.

This comes to 50,000 shares in total… 22,875 at a $4.00 strike price and sold at $25.00 in the open market.  Then there were 5,027 shares bought at a $4.58 exercise price and sold at $25.00, and then another 22,098 shares with a $4.58 exercise price and those were sold at $25.00.  Total sale proceeds were $1.25 million.

VP of Operations and General Manager Guy Marsh sold 47,078 shares with an exercise price of $6.96 and the stock was sold at $22.93.

CFO Timothy Morris sold some 329,358 shares with a $5.11 exercise price and they were sold in the open market with an average price of $21.26. 

That filing was yesterday, and other share sale filings had been made after last week’s huge gain in the stock.
 
These shares may have been under a 10b5-1 share sale plan, and frankly who could blame these insiders for unloading some shares now?  The stock had been depressed for so long that these insiders needed to go ahead and capture some of that upside after an exponential move.

Shares are down 9% at $21.55 today, but frankly this was after the options traders ran the thing up through the roof with the momentum traders.