CEO Sells Shares, I Sell My Sanity

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There I was, sipping lukewarm coffee at 6:03 a.m., when my phone buzzed with the news: Christopher Gibson, CEO of Recursion Pharmaceuticals, had sold 100,000 shares. I blinked. Was this a man divesting his life’s work, or merely a man realizing he’d overestimated his ability to predict the future? I’ve never trusted anyone who owns more than two pairs of shoes, but here we were, parsing SEC filings like they were horoscopes.

Metric Value
Shares sold 100,000
Shares gifted N/A
Transaction value ~$604,000
Post-transaction shares 954,229
Post-transaction value (direct ownership) ~$5.1 million

Transaction value is based on the SEC Form 4 weighted average purchase price ($6.04) as reported for the transaction on October 10, 2025.

Let’s not pretend we’re not all a little obsessed with percentages. Gibson’s sale? A tidy 9.49% of his direct holdings. That’s like eating the entire birthday cake and then complaining about the frosting. His recent median was 3.65%, so this feels less like a midlife crisis and more like a man realizing he’s been holding his breath too long at the bottom of the pool.

As for the derivative conversion-120,000 shares transformed from B to A-it’s the financial equivalent of wearing mismatched socks and calling it avant-garde. The exercise and sale of these shares read like a chess move, though I suspect the board is rigged with Monopoly money.

The market context? On October 13, 2025, the stock dipped to $5.53 per share. I’m no oracle, but if this were a movie, the stock price would be the character who dies in the first act, just to set the tone.

Metric Value
Market capitalization N/A
Revenue (TTM) $64.4 million
Net income (TTM) ($649.0 million)
1-year price change (17.71%)

* 1-year price change (17.71%) is calculated on a calendar-year basis as of October 13, 2025.

Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a company that once promised to revolutionize drug discovery with AI, now resembles a kitchen experiment gone wrong. They abandoned a lead candidate last year, then acquired a pipeline from Exscientia in an all-stock deal. It’s like swapping your sourdough starter for someone else’s expired mayonnaise and calling it innovation.

Outstanding shares have surged 52.3% in the past year. With 436.55 million floating around, it’s no wonder shareholders feel like they’re trying to build a sandcastle in a hurricane.

Later this year, Recursion expects data from phase 2 trials for REC-4881 and REC-617. I’ll be there, clutching my latte and a calculator, waiting for proof that their AI isn’t just a glorified Roomba. Until then, I’ll stick to my index funds and my delusion that I understand the stock market.

Glossary

Form 4: A bureaucratic love letter to the SEC, detailing who sold what and when.
Insider trading: When executives trade stocks like they’re betting on a reality show.
Derivative security: A financial instrument so abstract, it makes quantum physics look like child’s play.
Class A common stock: Shares with privileges, like a VIP pass to the corporate circus.
Direct ownership: Shares you actually own, not ones you borrowed from your uncle.
Weighted average purchase price: The mathematically elegant way to lie about how much you paid.
Disposal (of shares): Selling your shares like you’re getting rid of a secondhand suit.
Pipeline: A company’s hope chest for future drugs, often more hopeful than practical.
Preclinical: The stage where drugs test on lab rats, who probably don’t want to be there.
TTM: A fancy way of saying “the past year,” because no one likes plain language.
Therapeutic candidate: A compound with potential, assuming it doesn’t kill everyone first.
Strategic collaboration: A partnership so vague, it could be a LinkedIn post.

I’ve never trusted anyone who owns more than two pairs of shoes. 🤷‍♂️

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2025-10-20 20:19