Mark Russell announced at the beginning of Nikola’s Corp.’s third-quarter earnings call Thursday that the planned January leadership transition to Michael Lohscheller was going so well that he was leaving early.
But there is more to it.
Nikola’s board of directors encouraged Russell to leave the helm of the electric truck and hydrogen maker early because he has been cashing out large amounts of his stock options daily since Sept. 15.
“The [Nikola share] price where it’s at makes it an issue,” Russell said in an interview with FreightWaves. “It looks bad. Me no longer being the sitting CEO helps those optics, I think.”
Russell has sold at least 75,000 shares a day since a Securities and Exchange Commission 10b-5 order took effect. It allows a company insider to automatically sell a predetermined number of shares on a continuing basis until the order is canceled. Executives promise they are not acting on inside information.
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Stefan
Fair enough. We’re lucky that nobody prevents him to buy back stock. Right?
CentralScrutinizer
Russell’s comments make no sense
MR has a long career at Worthington.. he did NOT roll over any of his Worthignton assets to NKLA.. he came in as an employee and got option grants.
his statement — “I’ve had almost all of my net worth and my retirement in Nikola stock from the beginning, d. That’s after 10 years of it being tied up in Worthington [Industries] stock before that.” — makes NO SENSE. he still has whatever bag he took when he retired from Worthington.. and he holds tens of MILLIONS of shares of Nikola jointly with convicted conman trevor milton.. not that those shares have much worth but we are talking tens of millions of dollars/
Russell is not being forthcoming as usual.