What Happened?
Shares of materials and photonics company Coherent (NYSE:COHR) fell 6.8% in the morning session after a major shareholder, Bain Capital, disclosed the sale of over $1 billion worth of its stock.
The private equity firm, which owned ten percent of Coherent, sold 7.5 million shares for a total value of approximately $1.075 billion. According to a regulatory filing, this transaction liquidated about 96.7% of Bain Capital's shares in that class of stock. Such a large sale by a significant insider often raises concerns among investors about a company's future outlook.
The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks. Is now the time to buy Coherent? Access our full analysis report here.
What Is The Market Telling Us
Coherent’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 46 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 2 days ago when the stock dropped 4.9% on the news that an executive sold a large block of shares. Executive Vice President Giovanni Barbarossa sold 60,706 shares of common stock for a total of $9.7 million. The shares were sold at a price of $160.00 each. While large insider sales can sometimes cause concern among investors about a company's outlook, the transaction was carried out under a pre-arranged trading plan that was put in place in December of the previous year. Following the sale, the executive still held 163,158 shares in the company.
Coherent is up 44.5% since the beginning of the year, but at $145.33 per share, it is still trading 12.8% below its 52-week high of $166.72 from November 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Coherent’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $2,443.
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