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Xero man's share sale coincidental to falling price


Stocks in the sharemarket darling show a stark turnaround as its chief operating officer makes a large share disposal. | Company takes 10 days to report the sale.

NBR staff
Tue, 28 Aug 2012

UPDATE:

Xero chief operating officer Alastair Grigg says a large share disposal he did in August is unrelated to today's NZX-questioned drop in share price.

Mr Grigg told NBR ONLINE the timing of his sale was just a coincidence.

"The timing was what it was. It wasn't the highest the share price has been at.

"It was just driven by personal circumstances."

The NZX today asked cloud-based accounting software firm Xero to explain why its share price dropped 16.9% over the past month.

Shares had fallen from $5.20 a month ago to $4.32 this morning, climbing back to $4.40 this afternoon.

On August 11, Mr Grigg sold 124,500 shares at $5.10 – for a total of $634,950 – although this was not disclosed to the market until August 21.

The price dropped a further 70 cents in the five working days following the August 21 disclosure.

The NZX asked Xero if there was any reason for the price fall, but the company said there was not.

Xero stocks have performed well since joining the NZX50 in June at $4.10, rising to $5.70 by July 17. 

 


4.10pm:

Xero today told the NZX it is compliant with the market's continuous disclosure obligations.

The online accounting software company was responding to an NZX Markets Supervision inquiry dated today (August 27) which read, in part

Since your last material market announcement (“Xero Annual Meeting 2012”) on 26 July 2012 the price of Xero Limited Ordinary Shares (“XRO”) has decreased from a market close price of $5.20
to $4.32, being the traded price at 11:22:16 at the date of this letter. This represents a decrease in the price of XRO of $0.88 or 16.9%.

In its brief reply, Xero did not give any reason for the price drop.

In a separate filing, Xero disclosed that its chief operating officer Alastair Grigg sold 124,500 shares at $5.10 for total consideration of $634,950 on August 11.

The transaction wasn't disclosed to the market until August 21.

Xero shares [NZX:XRO] were down 6.6% to $4.40 in late trading, valuing the company at $504 million.

NBR staff
Tue, 28 Aug 2012
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Xero man's share sale coincidental to falling price
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