A few executives at Duolingo Inc. collectively sold over $10 million in company stock over the past two months, an analysis of public documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has shown.
In a statement to Pittsburgh Inno, Duolingo Global Communications Director Sam Dalsimer said the stock sales come as part of a pre-planned and already-disclosed public announcement as part of SEC Rule 10b5-1, which handles the definition and regulation of insider trading policy.
"Rule 10b5-1 plans require that a plan be put in place with a cooling off period prior to the first sale — in our case, 90 days, and that the plan be put into place in the period immediately after earnings," Dalsimer said in an email statement. "The price, amount and sale dates are specified in advance of the sales."
Duolingo Chief Financial Officer Matthew Skaruppa saw the largest proceeds from his stock sales among other company executives who sold a significant amount of shares of East Liberty-based Duolingo (NASDAQ: DUOL) between Sept. 1 and Oct. 15, 2023, realizing about $4.1 million in sales and security conversion proceeds during this period.
Severin Hacker, Duolingo co-founder and chief technology officer, sold $3.1 million in company stock during these past few weeks, the second-largest amount for a Duolingo executive to have sold since Sept. 1.
Duolingo General Counsel Stephen Chen sold over $2.4 million in stock during this time period as well. And Duolingo Chief Business Officer Bob Meese sold $851,000 worth of Duolingo stock during this six-week period.
The share price of Duolingo's stock has climbed more than 14% since its Sept. 1 close of $148.92 per share and it ended trading on Tuesday, Oct. 17 at $170.80 per share. Year-to-date, the company's stock has grown in price by 140% since opening the year at $71.13 per share.
Over the past few years, Duolingo has expanded the capabilities of its flagship and namesake language learning platform to accommodate a growing number of subjects that can be taken by its tens of millions of learners around the world. As the most recent example of this, Duolingo opened a waitlist for on Oct. 11 for people to join interested in taking music lessons on the Duolingo iOS app, with music the latest subject to join the platform following the addition of math lessons last year.
During its second fiscal quarter ended June 30, Duolingo reported that more than 21 million people used its language learning platform on a daily basis, a figure that climbed by 62% year-over-year, while its monthly users during the same time period climbed 50% year-over-year to 74.1 million people. Of those monthly users, 5.2 million people are paying for one of Duolingo's premium subscription tiers, up 59% from those who were doing the same a year ago. Also during this quarter, Duolingo posted $3.7 million in net income, its first profitable quarter since becoming a public company in July 2021.
