The co-founder and president of MTY has just sold $20 million worth of shares in the Montreal franchisor. This is only the second time that Stanley Ma has sold shares since MTY went public.
The Montreal entrepreneur remains to this day the only one to hold more than 10% of MTY shares. Its stake in the company thus fell from 16.4% to 15%.
Stanley Ma sold a block of 365,000 shares last week. He carried out the operation during the sessions of Wednesday and Thursday, indicates a document filed with the regulatory authorities.
Now 76, Stanley Ma continues to serve as MTY’s President and Chairman of the Board. He handed over the CEO role to Éric Lefebvre five years ago.
Contacted by La Presse, Stanley Ma explains that the transactions are carried out for the purposes of estate planning and to support philanthropic works. It was also for the same reasons that he sold $50 million worth of stock in 2021.
It is known that Stanley Ma provides financial support to various organizations in the Montreal Asian community, including the Montreal Chinese Hospital, as well as Chinese TV and radio.
Stanley Ma’s compensation has always been relatively humble compared to that given to other public company executives. He never received stock options and in his final year as CEO in 2018, his annual salary was $426,000.
MTY stock remained relatively stable during the first session of the week. The stock closed at $57.90 Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. After falling as low as $14 at the start of the pandemic, the stock hit a high of $73 last February before falling back to its current level.
Only two of the seven analysts officially reporting on MTY’s business recommend buying the stock.
The current stock price gives a market value of 1.4 billion to MTY.
MTY Group operates more than 7100 establishments under more than 85 brands such as Bâton Rouge, Café Dépôt, Houston, Thai Express, Tiki-Ming, Valentine, Sushi Shop, etc.
MTY’s network revenue increased 17% to $4.3 billion in fiscal year 2022.
The letters MTY are taken from the first letters of the surnames of the three founders: Stanley Ma, Kenneth Toye and Stanley Yee.