Treasury Wines chief fetches $6.9m from share sell-down

Treasury Wine boss Michael Clarke has netted $6.9m after offloading 400,000 shares in his firm.

Treasury Wine Estates CEO Michael Clarke. David Geraghty/The Australian

The chief executive of Treasury Wine Estates, Michael Clarke, has sold 400,000 shares in the company in an on-market trade last week that will net him $6.88 million.

Mr Clarke, who joined the winemaker famous for brands such as Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Lindemans in 2014 when the company’s shares had slumped to below $4 as it suffered a string of downgrades and operational problems, has seen the Treasury Wine share price climb as high as $19.24 and he has now disposed of some of his stock to raise funds.

In a note to the ASX this morning, the company said Mr Clarke had sold 400,000 shares in sales that happened on May 1 and May 3 and were made after the company’s financial update on May 1 and during the CEO’s tight trading window that governs when he can trade in Treasury Wine (TWE) shares.

The first tranche of 375,000 shares were sold for $17.22 each with the second tranche of 25,000 shares sold for $17.25 each. The trades will generate $6.88m in cash. According to the notice lodged with the ASX, the sale of 25,000 shares were by Mr Clarke’s spouse.

Following these sales Mr Clarke still has plenty of skin in the game with 1.795m shares made up of 542,994 ordinary shares and 1,252,451 performance rights.

In August 2018 Mr Clarke sold 300,000 shares worth around $5.7m.

Shares in Treasury Wines slid by more than 5 per cent in the wake of the CEO’s notice of shares sold as well as a damning presentation from a US hedge fund manager at an investment conference in New York this week that claimed the winemaker was falsely pumping up its sales and that its share price had a 50 per cent downside.

Treasury Wine was down 88 cents, or 5.4 per cent, at $15.29 this morning.

Angela Aldrich at Bayberry pitches a short on $TWE with channel stuffing and bundled distribution as two primary catalysts #Sohn2019 #sohnconf19 #SohnConferences #sumzero

— Sohn Conf Foundation (@SohnConf) May 6, 2019

At the 24th annual Sohn Investment Conference in New York, Angela Aldrich, founder and managing partner of Bayberry Capital Partners, listed a litany of operational and financial issues she believes are threatening Treasury Wine’s profitability and in a series of blistering slides accused the company of a number of unethical practices, capping off her presentation by arguing Treasury Wine’s share price has at least a 50 per cent downside.