Buyers Beware.
Home Depot Insiders Sell $102 Million in Stock -- Barrons.com
DOW JONES & COMPANY, INC. 2:39 PM ET 12/12/2017
Symbol Last Price Change
HD 181.8down -0.45 (-0.25%)
QUOTES AS OF 04:00:26 PM ET 12/12/2017
Home Depot (HD) shares have been on a tear this year. The stock is up 39% year-to-date through Monday's close, not including dividends.
The home-improvement retailer is seeing a boost in business from millennials and other first-time home buyers. Home Depot's(HD) fortunes were also intertwined with domestic disaster-recovery efforts this year.
The company last week announced a $15 billion share-buyback program. That will absorb the increased stock sales by insiders, which stand at nearly $102 million year-to-date compared with $65 million in all of last year.
Chairman, Chief Executive and President Craig Menear leads selling in 2017, totalling $34.5 million so far. His latest transaction was on May 17 when he exercised options for 90,661 shares and sold an equal number for $14.2 million. The options had exercise prices of $18.52 per share and were set to expire November 2018. Menear now owns 124,300 shares directly. Last year he sold only $6 million in stock. This year is the soft-spoken Michigan native's 20th with the company.
Matt Carey, executive vice president and chief information officer, has sold $14.9 million in stock so far this year. Carey's latest transaction was on Dec. 8 when he exercised options for 41,400 shares and sold an equal number for $7.6 million. The options had per-share exercise prices ranging from $36.62 to $49.79, and were set to expire March 2021 at the earliest. Carey, a Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) veteran who has also logged time at eBay (EBAY), now holds 50,500 Home Depot(HD) shares directly and nearly 14,000 shares through a family trust. Last year he sold $12.3 million in stock.
Chief Financial Officer Carol Tomé made a single sale this year, grossing $14.5 million for 100,000 shares on Feb. 23, about $145.25 a share. She had also exercised options for 100,000 shares that same day. The options had exercise prices of $36.62 per share and were set to expire March 2021. She sold $13.2 million in stock in 2016. It's been suggested that Tomé had been a contender for the CEO post that Menear won in 2014.
Timothy Crow, former executive VP, human resources, was another big seller. He exercised options for 88,253 shares also on Feb. 23 and sold an equal number that day for $12.8 million, or about $145.26 each. The options had exercise prices of $36.62 per share and were set to expire March 2021. He sold $6.7 million in stock in 2016. Crow left Home Depot(HD) in July and joined the board of Milacron Holdings (MCRN), a maker of highly engineered and customized systems within the plastic technology and processing industry.
Speaking of plastic, days after Menear was named Home Depot's(HD) CEO in 2014, hackers broke into the retailer's system, compromising about 56 million customer credit-card accounts. For years "the impact and expected outcome of investigations, inquiries, claims and litigation, including those related to the 2014 data breach" lurked in the fine print of guidance updates. No more. Home Depot(HD) settled what it called "the most significant claims" earlier this year and in the fiscal third quarter ended Oct. 29, a judge approved the last settlements related to the breach. The breach was one of the many challenges Menear's Home Depot(HD) has overcome.
"What motivates me is to continue to grow and to help other people grow, " Menear recently told the Michigan State University Alumni Association and Friends. Investors hope he's got the stock price in mind, as well.
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