No link between Moderna CEO’s deleted Twitter and stock sales

A social media post erroneously suggested that there is a link between Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel’s Twitter activity and his stock trading.

"The CEO of Moderna deleted his Twitter and dumped $400 million of Moderna stock," a Feb. 15 Instagram post claimed, referring to the COVID-19 vaccine maker. "Big Pharma seems to know some bad news is coming."

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Bancel did delete his personal Twitter account (@sbancel) in February and has sold a substantial amount of Moderna stock in recent years, but the post ignores important context about the timing and circumstances of the sales, and leaves a misleading impression about the reasons behind them.

Bancel, whose compensation has included salary and stock options, has been regularly selling Moderna shares since September 2019. Over the last two and a half years, he has sold about $400 million worth of company stock in regularly scheduled trades, according to a website that tracks trading by company insiders.

The transactions are in accordance with Securities and Exchange Commission rules that allow company insiders to sell stock at predetermined dates. Doing so helps executives avoid any appearance or suspicion of illegal insider trading — that is, trading based on inside information that’s not available to the public.

According to the February SEC filings, Bancel’s trading plan was adopted in December 2018, around the time the company went public, and was last modified in May 2020.

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So the post’s claim that he "dumped" $400 million in connection with some bad news is inaccurate. Bancel’s sales in February were in line with his trading plan.

On Feb. 2, Bancel sold 19,000 shares of Moderna stock, worth $3.1 million, according to an SEC filing. A week later, on Feb. 9, Bancel sold another 19,000 shares, worth just under $3 million, per an SEC filing. The two transactions amounted to $6.1 million and represented only a small fraction of Bancel’s holdings. He still owns 21.8 million shares of Moderna stock, a company spokesperson told PolitiFact.

Moderna’s stock price is well off its peak in August 2021, when it traded at nearly $500 a share. Its recent closing prices have been about a third of that.

Bancel deleted his personal Twitter account earlier this month. It’s not clear why he did so, but Bancel was not very active on Twitter. His last tweets were from April 2019, according to a November 2021 archived version of his account.

An Instagram post claimed, "The CEO of Moderna deleted his Twitter and dumped $400 million of Moderna stock" and suggested that the moves were due to impending bad news about the company.

Bancel deleted his rarely used Twitter account, but there is no evidence to suggest that action is linked to his stock trades or bad news about the company.

He did not "dump" $400 million of stock. His stock sales happened over more than two years, as part of a series of regularly scheduled trades. The most recent sales amounted to $6.1 million. He still owns 21.8 million shares of Moderna stock.

We rate this claim Mostly False.