An SEC filing shows that Apple’s SVP of Retail Angela Ahrendts sold AAPL stock totalling $6M in the week in which the Apple Watch hits stores.
It’s nothing out of the ordinary for Apple execs to sell shares from time to time, either to fund a purchase – like a house – or, perhaps more likely given the timing, to pay a tax bill.
Ahrendts was given a compensation package worth $73M when she joined the company, just over $70M of it in stock. Apple explained that the amount partly reflected that she walked away from $37M in unvested Burberry stock – shares she would have received had she remained with the company but lost by leaving.
Around 40% of the total sum she is due to receive from Apple is subject to performance requirements. Given the company is about to embark on what is easily its most complex retail launch ever, with Ahrendts attempting to direct Apple Watch and 12-inch MacBook sales online, she may be feeling just a little nervous at present.
The SEC filing can be seen below.
Photo: Fast Company
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She’s concerned AppleWatch sales will be poor and trying to compensate for Apple’s share price dropping. I can’t blame her for being nervous with all the negative AppleWatch talk in the news media.
Wrong.
Exactly! …..taxes my arse….. haha… She’s shook up. Because if Steve Jobs was still live, he would never have launched a smartwatch now and may never have launched it at all since he hated both jewelry and wearing watches. That is evident since way back when he did the FDR commercial and wasn’t wearing one. One think about Steve Jobs, no matter the fact he was an a$$hole to his employees and partners (ripped off the Woz repeatedly), he was a visionary and perfectionist. Who always got the timing right on product releases. So I’d imagine he would have pulled Tim Cook aside and said, “Are you crazy launching a Apple Watch now, before the market is fully developed?”
Apple is already too late to be first, so why not just hold off until you have a chip and battery solution in the industry to make it a sure fire success? For me…. I think share holder pressure got the best of Tim and he’s really just a numbers and finances man. Not even close to Technology Genius or Visionary like Steve was! ……the interface is so complex and tiny, I doubt that most, “It just Works” consumers will even be able to comprehend how to get that swing right to turn the screen on! …..about every feature is already available to other mobile wearable devices, including both Tizen, Wear and plain old Android! I’m thinking we are about to see a launch flop. But no problem…. they’ll do it better next time!!!
Your analysis – not just of the Apple Watch product – but Apple products in general is ridiculously wrong. They’ve never been “first” in any market. But I guess your ability to channel Steve Jobs makes your post unassailable.
Either way people will buy the watch, a lot of the people that are talking bad and saying that it is going to do poorley are people that have owned AAPL and have lost money from it, the stock is definitely going to go up tomorrow with large online Watch sales, no doubt.
Flop is ahead so she’s too clever to lose money;)