Here are my observations on the Mulholland sales:
Post# of 148181
-Exercised 1,108,799 options at various prices from $.39 up to $.87 (btw, you need to subtract those exercise prices from the sale prices to determine his actual P&L)
-Sold basically the same amount of stock on 3 different days - 17th, 18th, 21st
-The above was all outlined in a 10b5-1 plan filed on 11/12/2020 (insiders have certain rules / restrictions so they need a predefined plan in place to make sales)
-The 10k seem to indicate all the vested options from 2019 & 2020 have 10-year terms. I'm not sure if these were granted ages ago or not...
Looks like he told his broker "Hey, exercise & sell X if the stock hits $4.50. Then exercise & sell Y if the stock hits $4.75. Then exercise & sell Z if the stock hits $5." --> those "round" numbers correlate to where he sold his shares and would make sense in a pre-defined 10b5-1 plan.
If the stock never made it to $4.50 this year, none of the above sales would have happened.
I looked back at the 2015 Annual Report and there were 490,000 options granted with a 5-year term. It looks like previous years also had options with 5-year terms. In this year's annual report I see several grants with 10-year terms though. So basically I don't think these were right on the verge of expiring.
Bulls & bears can speculate why he did this. Bulls can say he perhaps wants to buy a new house or needs the money for any number of personal reasons -- the guy is 67 years old don't forget...probably a grandfather too. Bulls can say he has many more options to play with. Bears can say he sees those prices as being overvalued for the stock and a good place to sell shares. Bears can say why exercise any at all even if he has millions of options vested already.
Stock will probably be lower on this in the short term, no way around that, but his personal reason for making sales doesn't change anything about the company's near term prospects and Vyrologix, just will spook the weak hands who assume the worst.
Personally, I'm guessing he simply needed the money for one reason or another, again, hes 67 years old. If I was 67 and in a pandemic and had an opportunity to do something good for my family in the immediate term with my money, not sure I'd look for retail investor approval on it.
Anyway - just wanted to lay out the facts as I saw them, come to your own conclusions.