Google CEO dumps more stock – Something he’d like to share with us?

Is there something else, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai would like to share with us? While in the news recently defending the integrity of Google’s services before the House Judiciary Committee, perhaps less well known has been his recent director stock sales, which this quarter alone (up to 6th Dec) have already amounted to -50k Alphabet shares, to raise of over $53m. Including other company insiders, sales to date this quarter have totalled over 800k shares, or a net -330k of sales after approx +240k of gross purchases. This doesn’t seem like a ringing endorsement by Mr Sundar of Alphabet, with the stock trading on a soon to be prospective OpFCF yield of over 3% and adj PE of 25x; not particularly demanding relative to organic sales growth still comfortably over +20% pa.  Perhaps that top line growth is under greater pressure than markets have been forecasting, or perhaps Mr Sundar’s brush with Washington has made him concerned about the onset of regulatory push-back including a possible anti-trust break-up of dominant internet brands such as Google.

Insider sales over the second half of this year to date (2018-12-06) meanwhile can be seen below.  For Mr Sundar, these currently total -110k shares raising a total proceeds of around $125m.