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Lordstown Motors falls after report execs sold stock ahead of earnings

Shares of Lordstown Motors fell on Monday after regulatory filings revealed that several top executives sold off chunks of stock in the electric-truck startup ahead of reporting financial results in early February.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Lordstown Motors back in the news today. And the shares are back in the red. They're down between 5% and 6% at the moment. And Brian Sozzi, you have been digging into this company. You've been also emailing a bit with them after some reports about what executives were doing with shares before some recent announcements.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, this is a really good story by the Wall Street Journal this morning. And in that story, they're noting the company's top five executives, including current president Rick Schmidt and the company's former CFO, sold more than $8 million in stock over three days in February. Now what happened in mid-March, the company came out with a whopping loss, more than double analyst estimates. And the stock has been essentially in free fall ever since. You've had complete management turnover. It's been, really, an absolute disaster.

Interesting to note, inside this "Wall Street Journal" story, this definitely gets my OMG award for this week. I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous. It says, according to the Journal, President Rick Schmidt sold his stock in the company during that period to go out, not launch, but expand a turkey hunting farm in Tennessee. That is correct. He is expanding a turkey hunting farm in Tennessee, while essentially the company that is, in fact, paying for his endeavors to launch or expand that turkey farming venture in Tennessee is completely going up in smoke.

Now I exchanged an email with a company spokesman at Lordstown this morning. He refuses to admit that Schmidt is expanding into a turkey hunting venture in Tennessee. Not too sure what's going on there. It's embarrassing. It's the absolute, really, indications of incompetence at the highest level in corporate America. This is absurd.

JULIE HYMAN: Are the trucks that they drive around the turkey hunting property electric would be--

BRIAN SOZZI: Can't confirm that either. But, you know, and I can't confirm if these are organic turkeys. But clearly, Rick Schmidt has an affinity to go out there and hunt turkeys while his company is blowing up. I'd be surprised if this guy survives the rest of this month at the company.

JULIE HYMAN: Hunting turkeys indeed. That's what we do here at Yahoo Finance. All right--