Ari Emanuel sold about $3.4 million of shares in his Endeavor Group Holdings Monday, the third such sale in the past two months.
The CEO of the management and entertainment company submitted a regulatory filing late Tuesday that shows he sold 154,495 shares at an average $22.28 per share, netting more than $3.44 million.
The filing explained that the sale was made automatically, triggered in connection with the settlement of certain restricted stock. Like the senior executives at most companies, Emanuel in the past received a significant portion of his compensation in shares that become vested and settled in the future, after receipt. The filing does not say when Emanuel exercised the units related to his most recent share sale.
Emanuel is now attributed ownership of more than 41.8 million shares of the company, or 12.3% of the company, according to a separate regulatory filing submitted Tuesday. He has sole control over about 12 million of those shares.
His most recent sale came with the stock basically flat for the year. It was trading at $22.51 at midday Wednesday.
Endeavor stock saw a slight dip in early April when the company announced that its UFC will combine with Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment, a deal praised by Wall Street that nevertheless left investors unenthused.
A few weeks later, investors cheered Endeavor’s announcement that it would sell global sports education institution IMG Academy to a unit of private equity firm EQT, in an all-cash deal valued at $1.25 billion.
Emanuel made a series of moves at the time, after the announcement pushed the stock to its peak for the year, a regulatory filing shows.
Emanuel vested into, or acquired, 951,389 shares that he had received as part of his compensation for running the company on May 3. The shares were worth about $23.8 million.
Vesting those shares triggered the earlier automatic sale of two large blocks of shares in the following days to cover the related taxes and fees.
One sale saw 300,000 shares go on May 4 for $24.66 per share, roughly $7.4 million. The second was a series of sales on May 5 that totaled 187,542 shares for an average price of $24.94, or roughly $4.7 million.
Emanuel’s 2022 compensation was over $19 million, according to the company’s proxy statement. That was made up of a salary of $4 million, bonuses and non-equity incentives totaling $14.2 million and $868,000 worth of perks, including use of the company aircraft, club membership fees, 401(k) matches and personal security services.
He did not receive any restricted stock units in 2022, but was awarded stock grants valued at nearly 294 million in 2021.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story said Emanuel stood to benefit from the proceeds of the sale as per available SEC filings at the time. This story has been updated to include information from a subsequent filing.