Shares of SoFi Technologies (SOFI 1.45%) are down nearly 15% in the last week, in part because skittish investors are grappling with the implications of a handful of executives selling some of their shares in the company.
But are these insider sales really a harbinger of bad things for the fintech? I don't think so, and here's why.
NASDAQ: SOFI
Key Data Points
Perspective on the handful of recent SoFi insider sales
For perspective, whenever certain insiders (usually high-ranking executives or large institutional stakeholders) buy or sell shares of a publicly traded company, that company is required to disclose those transactions in Form 4 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
According to several new Form 4 filings from SoFi earlier this week, multiple executives have sold decent-size chunks of their stakes in the fintech and banking specialist since then.
On Nov. 2, SoFi president Chad Borton sold just over 152,000 shares at around $7.99 each, reducing his stake by nearly half to just under 158,000 shares. The following day, chief risk officer Aaron Webster sold 215,299 shares at around $8.08 per share, reducing his stake to 476,221 shares.
Lastly, on Nov. 6, chief marketing officer Lauren Stafford Webb sold 135,832 shares at an average price of $7.58 per share, reducing her stake to 257,608 shares.
Sounds bad, right? Well, not really.
As the legendary investor Peter Lynch once said: "Insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: They think the price will rise."
First, let's focus on the first half of that statement. On one hand, the market seldom views insider selling as a positive sign for any given company. On the other hand, these modest sales shouldn't be bothersome.
Note that shares of SoFi rocketed nearly 17% higher on the heels of its better-than-expected third-quarter report (released on Oct. 30). And even after their recent pullback, they're still up more than 50% year to date.
It's hard to blame these executives for taking some profits off the table, in what seems a likely effort to diversify their portfolios (one of them is the company's chief risk officer, after all).
What's more, these sales aren't exactly novel: If you zoom further out on SoFi's insider-transaction history, you'll see that Borton, Webster, and Stafford Webb each sold a similar number of shares back in June as well, with the transactions following not long after their execution of likely related vested stock-option awards.
Whether they're selling to pay taxes on that compensation, diversify their portfolios, or simply using the money for some other large expense or purchase in their lives, other shareholders shouldn't be up in arms over the transactions. Again, insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons.
Be more concerned if these SoFi insiders start selling
Let's move to the second half of Lynch's statement -- that insiders buy shares for only one reason: They think the price will rise.
The above sales are still absolutely dwarfed by CEO Anthony Noto's repeated open-market purchases of up to several hundred thousand shares stretching from the start of 2022 up through June of 2023. I'd be much more concerned if it were Noto himself paring down his position after so obviously indicating his ongoing bullishness to the market since he took the helm in 2018.
Incidentally, as fate would have it, after the market closed on Thursday, two new Form 4 filings from SoFi hit the wires disclosing fresh insider buys. Sure enough, these included a 44,000-share purchase from Noto, bringing his stake to a massive 7,239,289 shares, and a nearly 15,000-share open-market purchase from chief financial officer Chris Lapointe (his stake is now 827,068 shares).
Here again, it seems SoFi's CEO and CFO are once again stepping out on a limb to make their viewpoints clear: They think the price of SoFi is set to rise. And I think patient, long-term shareholders willing to bet on the company's continued strong execution would do well to follow suit.
