Intel Stock Price: CEO Sold $11 Million In Shares Before Security Flaws Were Public

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold millions of dollars worth of his company’s stock prior to the public disclosure of a major security flaw that affects effectively all processors produced in the last two decades.

According to a filing made with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Krzanich completed a number of transactions in which he exercised his employee stock options to purchase Intel shares at a lower price and immediately sold those shares on the open market.

The transactions were completed on Nov. 29, 2017. At the time, Krzanich held 495,743 shares of Intel. He sold 242,830 shares in one transaction and 2,913 shares in a separate transaction, with the average price for those shares coming out to $44.55 per share—allowing the Intel CEO to pocket about $11 million.

Most interesting (and potentially troubling) about the transactions is the fact that it left Krzanich with exactly 250,000 shares—the bare minimum that he is required to hold as CEO of the company, according to the company bylaws.

There are a number of reasons that an executive might sell off large portions of company stock, whether it be for personal reasons like making a large purchase or because they expect the company may underperform in some aspects and would like to cash in before the stock dips.

However, given the recent revelation that Intel processors are plagued by a major security flaw that put millions of machines at risk, the timing of the sale has raised suspicions for some that the CEO sold off his stock before the public could learn of the bugs.

Those bugs, known as Meltdown and Spectre, affect just about every processor that Intel has produced since 1995. The attacks vary in execution, but primarily make use of the same type of attack that allow processes and applications to gather sensitive information from privileged areas of a machine that they should not have access to.

Thus far, Intel has insisted that Krzanich’s sale of company stock was unrelated to any revelations regarding the security flaws. A spokesperson for the company has said the transactions were “unrelated” to the flaws and were made “pursuant to a pre-arranged stock sale plan (10b5-1) with an automated sale schedule.”

Intel is yet to provide information as to the timeframe of when Meltdown and Spectre were discovered and how long the company and other vendors have been aware of the issue. Many vendors have already produced and released fixes that help to mitigate the threats.

Intel’s stock took a hit upon the disclosure of the security flaws, dropping as much as eight percent since the bugs were made public Wednesday. However, the stock has remained around the price that Krzanich sold his stock for. On Thursday, Intel stock price sat at $44.43, just $0.12 per share less than the price for Krzanich’s transactions.

The CEO’s stock trades are just the latest example of an executive’s behavior raising questions about insider trading. In August 2017, several Equifax executives sold company stock shortly after the company learned of a massive data breach that exposed the personal information of more than 145 million Americans. The company cleared its own executives of any wrongdoing in an internal investigation.