by ronle » Fri Apr 29, 2011 4:18 pm
Recently I wrote to SKS regarding his sale of stock and my displeasure with the sale. The following is his response (I did ask if it was OK to post his response and SKS said fine):
Ron,
I am very cognizant that any sale of my position is viewed poorly and I am sorry everyone feels that way.
I have had tens of thousands of shares in option expire that had been well into the money at a point in time but I never sold (looking back is always a bad plan but It is what it is)
I have never margined my position and never plan to while it is an invisible transaction (recommended by every idiot financial advisor) it is much more compromising.
I have extremely small windows of time when I can every sell a few shares. In the last 9 months the last couple of weeks have been the only window.
I have been an employee not a founder all stock I have was either part of compensation or Purchased by me. In this case it was shares that I purchased through our stock purchase program and had a basis of below a dollar some below 50 cents. This sale just about covers my original cash investment and leaves me with a nice share position.
So the only question I have is if you where my financial advisor and I had over 90 percent of my liquid net-worth in Wave stock the concept of selling a small position to invest in my family seems like a smarter move than a home equity loan. Almost half of my Mortgage was caused by exercising and holding options in 2000 I did not sell but paid AMT tax on (that was fun).
I would just say that I am fully focused, fully committed, and I think we are making great progress. We are working hard to make smart decisions and seize the leadership position in trusted computing. Stock is a very important aspect of attracting an keeping great talent and many of our employees have strongly benefited from their option position. I never view it as abandoning the company but as a great example of why hard work will create that opportunity.
I strongly believe in transparency and I will continue to be extremely simple with my equity position in Wave which is the correct approach
Thank you for you continued interest and support.
Steven Sprague
The above content is just my opinion.
