PROVO — Some 4.46 million shares of Nu Skin Enterprises stock has been sold for a net $114.3 million.
The shares were held by three founders and current governing board members, including company Chairman Blake Roney, and the LDS Church.
The sellers are not generally active in the open market and will still hold sizable stock positions in the company, director of investor relations Scott Pond said in a statement regarding the sale. The statement noted that selling the shares "was largely a personal decision by the selling parties as they seek to diversify their holdings."
The Provo-based skin care and nutritional supplements company, founded in 1984, stated in a prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the offered shares amount to about 7 percent of the company's 63 million shares, which were valued at $27 per share at the time of the sale.
Shares had been held by Roney, who netted an estimated $102 million, and by Steven Lund and Sandra Tillotson. Tillotson, whose 30,000 shares sold in the deal are a fraction of her 3.6 million shares, cleared about $768,000. Lund sold 27,000 shares out of his 1.74 million, reducing his ownership share slightly, to 2.7 percent, and earning him about $691,000 after expenses.
According to Bloomberg, Roney donated 400,000 shares to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Lund donated 3,000, which the church sold for a net $10.3 million. Roney netted $102 million, and still has almost 6 percent of the company's Class A common stock.
A "lock-up" agreement with Nu Skin that had restricted the number of shares that could be resold to 125,000, was waived in order to permit the offering.
The Nu Skin share price was $25.16 at the end of business Wednesday. Its highest recent value was $33.52 this past April.
e-mail: jthalman@desnews.com