On May 4th, more than $1B in Google insider shares was sold.
Google hasn’t made even close to $1B in revenue income.
I wonder who Yamazaki Shinobu and Sato Yasuo are? The two Japanese people on the list of Google insider share sellers do not have a market value on the number of shares sold. Hrm.
Quote.com: Insider NASDAQ:GOOG
I would double check your revenue number against page if I were you:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG
Those are planned sales not actual sales. It is not inconceivable that they filed the paperwork and stated market value in other currencies or something.
This is the page to look at for sales:
http://finance.lycos.com/qc/research/insider.aspx?datatype=Sell&symbols=NASDAQ:GOOG
Larry Page and Sergey Brin combined sold about half a billion dollars worth of stock since March.
sigh…
Gen, Google has annual revenue of $3.8 billion and annual net income of $700 million. $1.0 billion of stock sold represents about 1.5% of their equity market capitalization of $70 billion. Granted, they might be overvalued – but they might not be, either; it’s hard to say with companies on the steep part of an earnings / revenue growth curve.
Those insiders took a huge gamble by working at and funding the organization, and the market has decided they the stock has a certain value, so they monetize their shares. That makes sense. You can’t buy a house or employ a butler or purchase a Maybach with stock, after all – it’s just ownership in a company. If you held a large swath of stock in an organization and had been living not exactly la dolce vita while you grew a company, you’d have every right and indeed almost an obligation to yourself to enjoy some of the fruits of your inventiveness.
Gen, $700 million to most people is pretty darn close to $1.0 billion. Also, they are on a positive earnings and revenue trajectory – remember, when you own stock, you don’t just get one year of income, you get it forever. Those stock sales happened once – they relinquised their rights to any future income in the company, of which there will be rather a lot.