With Cyberonics’ CEO Skip Cummins Gone Over Options, Cramer Says It’s a Buy

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

by Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2006

Cramer then discussed options backdating on CNBC’s MAD MONEY.  He said when a CEO gets fired over this he thinks that is when you buy the stock.

Now that has happened to Cyberonics (CYBX) after Skip Cummins resigned over stock options.  The company makes this vagus nerve stimulator for severely depressed people.  Skip Cummins is a CEO that made himself hated and was a weight on the company, particularly after he has acted out brashly against Congressional oversight and toward the FDA.  Cramer said Cummins turned away takeover offers, but now it may be doable since only the caretakers are in charge.

Outside of Cramer touting the stock today, it has been trading up on its own.  After Carl Icahn bought in the stock ran up.  Yesterday after the close the CEO & CFO left over the options inquiry.  Today the stock rose 1.9% to $24.63 in normal trading, but shares rose an additional 5.5% to $26.00 in after-hours activity.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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