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During the first week of March, Outback Steakhouse's stock price reached all-time highs on four of five trading days. The stellar performance didn't go unnoticed by insiders at the Tampa company.
According to Bloomberg News, Outback officers and directors sold $17.6-million worth of company stock that week, the 10th most of any publicly traded company. The average sale price of the 361,100 shares was $48.71.
Thirteen Outback insiders made trades, including chief financial officer Bob Merritt, president Paul Avery and general counsel Joe Kadow.
Kadow sought to put the stock sales in perspective. He said Outback's insiders sold only a small percentage of their holdings. He also said the selloff was somewhat illusory: Outback lets its insiders sell their stock only during brief windows after each quarterly earnings release. That compresses them into a short period.
"More broadly," Kadow said, "in my opinion, stock sales by insiders are typically a function of individual circumstance rather than an indication of lack of confidence in the stock."