Total stock sales by Echelon CEO: Zero…
I wrote a story in today’s Mercury News looking at the big change in fortune at Echelon, the San Jose appliance networking company, and how CEO Ken Oshman’s decision to stick it out for two decades may be about to pay off. You can read the whole thing here. And if that leaves you begging for more, you can listen to the podcast that I did to go with it.
But one subject I didn’t touch on in the story was stock sales. With Echelon’s stock price up about 200 percent this year, it’s not surprising that more insiders are selling more stock. In 2007, insiders have sold $5.9 million worth of stock, compared to Zero in 2006, and $494,411 in 2005.
But here’s something that is surprising, nay, downright shocking: Oshman has never sold a single share of stock in almost two decades of running the company. He still holds 6,050,183 shares, or 15.1 percent. Oshman is financially secure from his previous gig, running ROLM, a telecom company that IBM bought in 1984. Still, it’s amazing.
Since the company went public in 1998, insiders have sold $44.6 million worth of stock, hardly a bonanza by Valley standards. The big winners include Motorola, an early investor, which sold about $13 million worth of stock early on.
As far as insiders go, Beatrice Yormark, chief operating officer, has sold $4.9 million worth of stock. And Oliver Stanfield, chief financial officer, has sold $6.6 million. Yormark has been at Echelon since 1990, while Stanfield has been there over a decade.
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One additional note, back in the bubble days after they annnounced the Enel deal, the stock was trading over $100 for a little while. None of them sold then either. They probably wish they had sold a little bit but I think that is also a testament to their belief in where they think they can go.
ROLM was an enormous success and would be a career definer for most people but I think Oshman believes that Echelon is a game changer. They have quite a few irons in the fire right now and have the potential to really bring themselves to the forefront of this energy efficiency debate in a hurry. The next few months are going to be very important for them.
i am with echelon from the first day they missed there earning post the ipo. the stock drop to 2$$. i bought as much as could. and with the years add more. ken oshman the man, and his dream, where the only reason i bought the stock. the green energy, will bring echelon to the front line .