Uber Execs Sell $78.2 Million In Company Stock Just Days After Mass Layoffs

ByAmy Lamareon June 8, 2020inArticles›Entertainment

Uber recently laid off about 25% of its workforce. There’s not much in the way of business for them during the pandemic shutdown. However, just days after the second round of layoffs at Uber, the company’s senior vice president of marketing and public affairs, Jill Hazelbaker, sold half her stake in Uber for $8.6 million, according to documents filed with the SEC. This is odd in a number of ways. First, it was not a pre-scheduled stock trade per “Rule 10b5-1 plan,” which gives stockholders a way to sell stock without violating insider trading rules or appearing to have lost confidence in the company. Hazelbaker’s trade appears to have been pre-cleared through Uber’s legal department and thus not a last-minute decision. Second, the size of the sale is unusual. Between May 21 and 25, she placed four transactions that sold 250,000 of her 436,680 shares, or 57% of her holdings.

Hazelbaker’s big sell-off has caused some chatter among the remaining employees of the rideshare company. Revenue for Uber has tanked and 10,000 Uber employees have been laid off. Some feel it shows a lack of confidence in the company or that she’s getting ready to resign. For what it’s worth, Hazelbaker is the longest-serving executive at Uber who has never cashed out her shares prior to now. She’s been at the company for five years and is the last remaining executive who served under co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick .

Uber Execs Sell $78.2 Million In Company Stock Just Days After Mass Layoffs - 1

Garrett Camp (Photo via Flickr JD Lasica/Wikimedia Commons)

Hazelbaker isn’t the only high-profile Uber-connected person to sell off stock. Co-founder Garrett Camp has sold $69.6 million since the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S. Since last fall, he has sold 44% of his stake in the company, according to documents filed with the SEC. Just since January 2020, he’s sold $145.4 million worth of shares. He’s sold $69.6 million of that since March. For Camp though, it was pre-arranged and part of the Rule 10b5-1 plan.

Camp announced he was resigning from his voting position on Uber’s board on March 31. Camp is a member of the Giving Pledge.

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Travis Kalanick Sells $547 Million Of Uber Stock To Fund His Next Venture

ByAmy Lamareon November 19, 2019inArticles›Billionaire News

Well, that didn’t take long. It’s been just about two years since Travis Kalanick was forced out of the company he helped co-found: Uber. Now he’s sold an enormous chunk of Uber stock just as the ride-sharing company’s post-IPO lockup period ended. Kalanick sold 20.3 million shares for about $547 million on Friday, November 8, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The lockup period is a 180-day restriction designed to reduce the volatility of shares in newly public companies.

Last week, Uber saw heavy selling that sent its share price spiraling downward for a 9% loss. The company is currently less valuable than it was in 2015 and some private investors are underwater on their investments. Share prices are down 36% since the IPO.

With the sale, Kalanick now has a 4.6% stake in Uber. That’s worth about $2.5 billion. He’s also still a member of the board of directors.

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Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Back in 2017, the proverbial ‘Ishtar hit the fan for Kalanick and Uber. First, he was lambasted by the public for joining Donald Trump’s team of advisers. He dropped out of that committee a few weeks later. Then, a video surfaced of Kalanick viciously berating an Uber driver while he was a passenger in the car. The driver was frustrated over how the company pays its drivers. Kalanick unleashed on his driver saying, among other things:

“Some people don’t want to take responsibility for their ‘sh-t.’”

At the time, Kalanick’s outburst seemed to be the lowest point he and the company he ran could sink to. And then, a former Uber engineer named Susan Fowler published an impassioned blog post in which she accused the company over overt sexism. She was propositioned by her boss time and time again. She took it to H.R. and they told her that her boss was too important to discipline. #DeleteUber became a trending topic on social media. Uber hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the growing number of allegations of sexual harassment.

After numerous scandals, the board of directors had enough and asked for his resignation. This marked the end of this chapter of Kalanick’s high-flying career. But now, with the infusion of $547 million into his bank accounts, it’s left people wondering just what Kalanick is up to next.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported an investment by Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund into CloudKitchens. Guess who runs that company? Travis Kalanick. It is a delivery-only restaurant startup. This is a relatively new space for apps – these so-called kitchens are known as virtual restaurants or dark kitchens. Dark kitchens/virtual restaurants are kitchen-only concepts that process and produce orders for delivery. There are no tables, chairs, servers, hosts, or storefront. The food can only be ordered online or through a mobile app and is delivered to the customer.

What’s fascinating is that with this new venture, Kalanick is competing directly with his former company. UberEats has been scaling its business rapidly and getting into the dark kitchen space.

For a long time, Uber was the most valuable startup in the world. It has lost that title to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

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