Juniper lives, and so do insider stock sales…

Juniper is back. And so are its insider stock sales.

The Sunnyvale networking equipment company seemed to be on the endangered species list during the telecom collapse earlier this decade. But it’s rebounded nicely, especially over the past year when its stock has more than doubled. The stock was trading at $32.21 near the end of Thursday.

Insiders put sales on hold for about a year, but began cashing in again in April. Since then, six insiders have sold 1,292,815 shares to collect $36,190,197.

That includes chief executive Scott Kriens, who sold 500,000 shares on July 24 for $30.49 per share to collect $15.2 million. That’s the largest sale in five years at Juniper, according to Thomson Financial. And it brings his total sales to $282.2 million.

While Kriens had the biggest single sale at Juniper, chief technical officer and Juniper co-founder Pradeep Sindhu has had a bigger year so far. Sindhu has sold 650,000 shares over the past three months at prices ranging from $22.68 to $30.91 to collect $17.3 million. Sindhu now has total stock sales of $203.9 million.

Update: Sindhu sold another 100,000 shares this week, according to filings on Thursday. He sold them at $30.69 per share to collect $3.07 million, bringing his total this year to $20.4 million.

Cnet and SEC go “formal”…

I posted a story early on Tuesday morning on Cnet disclosing that the SEC  had elevated its options probe from “informal” to “formal.” The company also revealed that some number of unnamed former executives had been subpoenaed. This apparently happened in May, but it was just disclosed Tuesday in a 10-Q filed by Cnet, way way way down in the filing.

How far down? Apparently some folks at the company didn’t know about it, and neither did their outside PR agency. A flak reached me mid-morning to insist the story was wrong and that all this had happened in 2006. In fact, the original federal probe started in 2006. But this new development happened in May 2007, I was quite sure, I told her. I was on my way into the office, and when I got in, I emailed her the portion of the 10-Q with the relevant information.

The long and winding road to a big Apple stock sale…

On Monday, Apple director William Campbell spent $690,000 to exercise 120,000 options at $5.75 per share. He sold all those shares for $17,357,271 for a net gain of $16,667,271, according to a series of Form 4s he filed on Wednesday. Thank you iPhone!

What’s interesting is the date of Campbell’s last stock sale as an insider: January 23, 1987. This is practically pre-historic times by Valley standards. Campbell originally was hired at Apple in 1983 but left late in the decade. He was chief executive of Intuit from 1994 to 1998.

Campbell joined the Apple board in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned from the wilderness. But Wednesday marked his first big Apple-related pay day, though we doubt he’s been suffering financially. Also, he still holds 253,015 shares.

And by the way, Campbell wasn’t the only Apple insider busy selling this week. Chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer sold 135,625 shares on Monday at $144.28 per share to collect $19,567,975. That will sit nicely with the $73.4 million in stock he’s sold since 2002.

Both men were selling under terms of prearranged stocks sales plans known as a 10b5-1 that they filed in January.

A deal’s a deal, right?

Wrong. Not if you are a certain senior vice president for Affymetrix.

On Wednesday the Santa Clara provider of genetic analysis tools detailed the good-bye package it gave to Thane Kreiner. (Oh, by the way, his employment with the company ended July 27, something you might not have known had you not read this filing.)

Kreiner’s letter of agreement when he was first appointed to head up sales and marketing in April 2006 laid out the terms of his termination any time before an initial 18-month period. He would be entitled to the remainder of the salary he would have received through Oct. 2007, along with health coverage and vesting of his stock awards through the end of the period.

Kreiner had served 15 months and a week of the 18-month period when his employment was “terminated” July 27. By our calculations, he was due roughly $77,000 in residual salary along with health coverage and vesting rights through Oct. 20 under the terms of his signing agreement.

Instead, Affymetrix agreed to pay him $362,308, the salary he would have received through October 20, 2008 – an extra year – plus $117,000, of his annual target bonus along with an additional year of heath coverage and vesting of his stock awards.

But wait, there’s more. Kreiner’s was also guaranteed up to 12 months of job placement services worth $20,000, and “reasonable legal counsel fees incurred” in connection with the execution of the separation agreement, not to exceed $50,000.

Wanted at Alliance Fiber Optic Products: Factcheckers…

Still hard to believe this mistake gets made, but Alliance Fiber Optic Products filed a series of Form 4s on Wednesday to correct mistakes made on the date and price of options granted to some insiders this year.

The original form 4s were filed on May 11 and set the grant date at May 10 for $1.69 per share. The amedned forms filed Wednesday set the date at July 30 and the strike price at $2.41.

It’s unclear how the dates were that far off. In this case, the goof involved 30,000 options granted each to three directors: Gwong-Yih Lee, James Yeh, and Ray Sun.

A tin parachute from Exar…

Normally, when executives depart from a Valley company, we wait for the dislosure of a generous severance package.

But it seems that John Herzing the now former vice president of world wide sales at Exar Corporation of Fremont, did not have such good fortune. In an 8-K filed on Wednesday, the company dislosed its severance agreement and that he had resigned immediately. The terms? He gets 12 weeks of pay, worth about $55,385, which he’ll have to pay taxes on. And the company will pay COBRA for three months.

In other words, he’s getting just about what any Valley cubicle dweller might expect to get. Maybe he can use the time off to work on his negotiating skills.

Some breathing room for A.P. Pharma…

A.P. Pharma, of Redwood City, dislosed that it raised $37.5 million back in June through private placement of stock. That should give it time to complete trials of a drug for ”the prevention of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.”

The extra dough will also apparently be enough to keep the pharmaceutical company from being delisted by Nasdaq.

The other co-director drops at Thomas Weisel…

In May, Thomas Weisel Partners lost Blake Jorgenson, a co-director of its investment banking business, when he joined Yahoo as chief financial officer.

Yesterday, in a filing with the SEC that included the release of its second quarter earnings, the Thomas Weisel slipped in news that Robert Kitts, the remaining co-director who was promoted to chief executive of the unit when Jorgenson left, will leave before the year is out, “to pursue other opportunities.” No word on who will replace him, or whether the company will take a Thing One and Thing Two approach.

The San Francisco investment bank that went public in 2006 reported second quarter results
after the market closed Tuesday that beat expectations. Its shares traded up about 42 cents
or 3 percent after hours, almost making up for the 51 cents the stock fell during regular trading.
Revenues for the quarter were up 13 percent from the year before to $71.7 million, while
profits nearly doubled.

Most of the growth was contributed by the firm’s asset management unit, where revenue grew 165
percent to $14.3 million. The increases were driven by private equity gains of $9.9 million in
the second quarter of 2007.

The investment banking unit under Kitts’ supervision saw sales rise 5 percent. Hmmm. Well, we hear Yahoo’s hiring…. 

Hi, you don’t know me, but could you please sell your company?

According to a Schedule 13-D filed on Monday, Packeteer chief executive David Cote got a call on Monday from Robert L. Chapman, of Chapman Capital, a private investment firm based in El Segundo, CA.

Chapman wanted to pass along some news. First, Chapman has spent about $25 million over the past month or so to buy about 9.9 percent of Packeteer’s stock. And second, he wants Packeteer to “hire an investment bank to maximize shareholder value.” 

Cote “refused to return Mr. Chapman’s telephone call,” according to the filing.

So, Chapman contacted Packeteer’s chief financial officer, David C. Yntema. And wouldn’t you know, Yntema “refused to record a written message for Mr. Cote regarding Chapman Capital’s demand that the Issuer hire an investment bank to maximize shareholder value” to even give Cote a message all.

The nerve!

Even better: “Mr. Yntema stated that Mr. Cote would not be returning Mr. Chapman’s telephone call at any time in the future.”

Take that!

So, then Chapman contacted Packeteer’s chairman Steven J. Campbell, who “refused to provide his E-mail address to allow Chapman Capital to provide, unilaterally and thus completely outside the venue of Regulation FD, information to the Issuer’s Board of Directors such as that within the forthcoming Original 13D Filing.”

And then:

“Following Mr. Chapman’s conveyance of Chapman Capital’s demand regarding the maximization of shareholder value, the conversation between Mr. Chapman and Mr. Campbell terminated abruptly.”

Click.

Packeteer’s stock has fallen by about half since the start of the year, closing at $7.19 per share.

Speaking of bonuses…

The ones at Intuit, the Mountain View financial software company, are coming at Internet speed. Their fiscal year ended today, but the board has already voted to award bonuses based on performances, which the rest of us won’t know about until earnings are reported next month.

But apparently, they were pretty darn good. On Monday, the company disclosed in an 8-K that it will pay out $101 million in employee bonuses. A year ago, the company had about 7,500 employees, which works out to about $13,500 per working stiff. Though we presume some workers were more equal than others.

That figure doesn’t include executive bonuses:

Stephen Bennett, president and CEO: $3.25 milion.

William Campbell, chairman: $600,000.

Scott Cook, chairman of the executive committee: $400,000.

Brad Henske, former vice president, consumer tax group: $720,000.

Richard William Ihrie, senior vice president, small business product development: $450,000.

Kiran M. Patel, senior vice president, consumer tax group: $683,000.

Brad Smith, senior vice president, small business division: $765,000.