The Discovery founding duo, Adrian Gore and Barry Swartzberg, have offloaded close to R70 million of their shares in the company.
Discovery reported on Wednesday that Gore sold R42.7 million worth of his Discovery ordinary shares in two transactions last Friday. Swartzberg sold more than R26 million of Discovery shares on the same day.
The company said the two sold these shares to use the proceeds to service individual funding arrangements entered into to subscribe to various rights offers for Discovery shares over time.
At the end of 2019, Gore entered into a massive hedging contract, which capped the upside of Discovery’s share price at R160. At the time, he was forced to schedule a teleconference to address market concerns about the contract, as well as about a transaction which saw Herschel Mayers, co-founder of Discovery Life, sell more than R117 million in Discovery shares in one go.
In September last year, Mayers sold another R387 million in Discovery shares over two days.
News of the most recent share sales by Gore and Swartzberg did not keep the Discovery share price from moving up 0.6% to R143.38 by early afternoon on Wednesday.
After falling below R70 at the height of pandemic fears in March last year, Discovery's share price has recovered by 148% in the interim.
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