Monia Brett P 4

What Happened
Monia Brett, CEO of Ionis Pharmaceuticals (IONS), exercised stock options on March 9–10, 2026, acquiring a total of 148,454 shares at an exercise price of $60.89 (cash paid ≈ $9,039,365). Over the same dates she sold a total of about 160,773 shares in open-market transactions, generating gross proceeds of ≈ $12,114,155. The exercised shares and the sales occurred at materially higher market prices (sales in the $73.44–$76.70 range), so these were option exercises followed by market sales rather than new open-market purchases.

Key Details

• Transaction dates: March 9–10, 2026. Filing date: March 11, 2026 (timely).
• Options exercised (Code M): 40,822; 73,529; 34,103 — all at $60.89, total cash paid ≈ $9.04M. Some derivative line items are reported with $0.00 to reflect conversion/termination of the derivative.
• Open-market sales (Code S): 7,382 @ weighted avg $74.11; 117,604 @ weighted avg $75.26; 1,684 @ $75.58; 16,512 @ $75.47; 17,591 @ $76.34. Total shares sold ≈ 160,773 for gross proceeds ≈ $12.11M.
• Footnotes: Some sales were made pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted Dec 8, 2025 (F1). Other footnotes (F2–F6) note that reported prices are weighted averages and specify the price ranges for the multiple executions; the filer offers to provide a per-trade breakdown on request.
• Shares owned after transaction: not specified in the provided Form 4 data.
• Filing timeliness: The Form 4 was filed within the SEC’s two-business-day window (not late).

Context

• These filings show option exercises (insider converted options into common stock) followed by immediate or near-immediate open-market sales of stock. That pattern often reflects exercising options to obtain shares and then selling some or all of those shares (commonly to cover exercise costs, taxes, or rebalance), but the filing itself gives no explanation of motivation.
• Several sales were executed under a pre-established 10b5-1 plan, which is a mechanical trading plan and can limit the inference about insider timing.
• No purchases or gifts were reported here; the net effect is a reduction in the insider’s publicly held shares (exact post-transaction holdings not shown).