Tim Cook sells $36 mn worth of Apple stock

He earned the additional 280,000 shares because Apple stock AAPL, -0.11% outperformed more than two-thirds of the companies in the S&P 500 stock index over the past three years.

The shares, which were previously restricted, were valued at United States dollars 135 million.

The CEO revealed in a securities filing that Apple awarded him 1.26 million shares worth about $135 million under a five-year stock compensation plan. In the coming years, Cook will also likely collect another 3.5 million shares which are still under restrictions.

Cook took the reins at the company in August 2011 after Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO.

Meanwhile, under Cook’s stewardship Apple had become the world’s biggest public company, and had twice broken the record for the biggest quarterly profit in history. Jobs died in October of that year. People from statistics compared Apple’s situation in five years with the main competitors, but also with the stock index evolution of Nasdaq Composite, which includes many companies in the technology sector and therefore is strongly influenced by them. Vetr lowered shares of Apple from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating and set a $105.47 price target on the stock.in a research note on Monday, August 15th.

Including the sales made for tax withholding, Cook grossed $106.7 million.

Meanwhile, as a result of the sale of Apple stock by Cook, 1.31 million shares – including some earlier Apple stock holdings – worth almost $140 million were left with the high-profile Apple executive at closing price on Friday.

Though Cook pocketed $36 million from the sale, he ultimately surrendered shares worth $71 million to cover taxes.

What’s more, Cook has been rewarded in other ways besides stock option packages since the year of sole grant of stock options.

The bulk of Mr. Cook’s compensation comes from this plan. The stock closed at $108.03 on Wednesday in NY, up from a split-adjusted $53.74 on the day Cook took over the top job.

Cooky announced the share provision in an SEC filing [PDF].

“If I’m a stockholder, I’m less concerned about what the CEO is paid when the stock is doing well”, Leder said.