Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla, sold 62% of his stock the same day his experimental COVID-19 vaccine was announced as successful in clinical trials.
According to filings registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bourla sold 132,508 shares of the company at an average price of $41.94 per share, or a total of $5.6 million. Pfizer’s inventory has a 52-week high of $41.99, which means Bourla has sold its stock at the highest value in the past year.
The company has sold its stock through routine Rule 10b5-1, a predetermined trading plan which enables employees of the company to sell their stocks according to insider-trading legislation. The sale of Bourla was included in a plan adopted on 19 August, as the filing showed. He still holds 81,812 Pfizer shares.
Pfizer confirmed that the stock sales of Bourla were part of a plan allowing major shareholders and insiders to trad a pre-determined number of shares at an agreed time.
Pfizer is already working on a powder-shaped workaround vaccine to address the current limit: the fact that it has to be stored at extremely low temperatures.
The two-dose vaccine administered three weeks apart will not be immediately distributed because the US Food and Drug Administration needs to assess and approve it.
