Abiomed Inc. (NSDQ:ABMD) CEO Michael Minogue sold off about $1.1 million in stock yesterday, according to an SEC filing.
Riding the momentum of its Impella heart pump, the Danvers, Mass.-based company’s shares have risen 68 percent above 2010’s closing price of $9.61 as of yesterday’s close of $16.07 — a 52-week high.
Minogue sold 69,500 shares for about $16.04 a piece. The shares’ exercise price was $9.05, giving the CEO proceeds of about $486,000, according to the regulatory filing (PDF). He still owns 187,091 ABMD shares, according to the filing.
Read more of MassDevice.com’s coverage of Abiomed
Abiomed vastly outperformed both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones IHI index of medical device stocks in the first quarter. The S&P 500 Index gained 5.4 percent during the period; the Dow IHI was up 9.1 percent during that span. ABMD stock averaged $12.32 during the quarter and closed the three months ended March 31 at $14.53.
The first-quarter spike (which corresponds to Abiomed’s fiscal 2011 fourth quarter) highlights the company’s steady advances since it won 510(k) clearance for the Impella 5.0 and LD pumps nearly two years ago. Back then Abiomed shares were trading at about $5.50; since then it’s reported steadily increasing sales and cut its net losses considerably. The company rang Wall Street’s bell — literally — with its third-quarter results, reporting that sales jumped nearly 23 percent during the three months ended Dec. 31., to $27.2 million. That helped it pare losses to just $802,000, or 2 cents per share. Abiomed posted losses of $4.6 million, or 12 cents per share, on sales of $22.8 million during Q3 2010.
That performance itself sent shares up about 25 percent that day, which ended with Minogue ringing the NASDAQ exchange’s closing bell.