Key points
- Ten Viasat insiders sold 1,113,241 shares for $54.8 million in the 12 months through Aug. 10, 2026.
- None of them filed an open-market purchase in that stretch.
- Chairman and CEO Mark Dankberg accounted for $36.9 million of the total, all under a trading plan, and still holds 1,082,196 shares.
- VSAT closed at $84.82 on Aug. 10, up 231% from $25.62 a year earlier.
A Form 4 landed at the SEC on Aug. 6 for Theresa Wise, a director at Viasat (VSAT). It reports 2,500 shares sold on Aug. 4 at $84.69, which is $211,725. She's left with 11,000. On its own, it's not a big deal, and what made me look twice was the price. Go back through a year of Viasat Forms 4, and $84.69 is the best price any insider at this company has gotten.
That sent me back through every Viasat Form 4 since last August. Ten insiders sold stock in the 12 months to Aug. 10. That's 50 transactions and 1,113,241 shares worth $54.8 million. None of them bought a single share on the open market in the same year.
| Insider | Role as filed | Shares sold | Value | Plan on file? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mark Dankberg | Chairman and CEO | 700,000 | $36,955,397 | Yes, all |
| Richard Baldridge | Director | 127,122 | $5,045,632 | No |
| Shawn Duffy | SVP, Chief Accounting Officer | 101,480 | $3,516,972 | No |
| Benjamin Palmer | SVP, Pres Commercial | 38,588 | $2,637,913 | Some |
| Garrett Chase | SVP, Chief Financial Officer | 62,000 | $2,534,474 | Some |
| Craig Miller | SVP, Pres Viasat Government | 40,645 | $1,856,317 | Yes, all |
| Robert Blair | SVP, General Counsel | 32,680 | $1,511,457 | Some |
| Theresa Wise | Director | 5,000 | $384,225 | Yes, all |
| Camellia FitzGerald | Chief Accounting Officer | 3,929 | $190,830 | Yes, all |
| John Stenbit | Director | 1,797 | $140,211 | Yes, all |
The buy I was looking for would be a transaction code P, an insider putting his own money into shares on the open market. Viasat insiders did take in stock through vesting and company awards over the year, but that's scheduled compensation, which lands whatever the share price is doing. Not one code P appears in a year of filings.
Five of the ten picked their own dates
Every Form 4 carries a box the filer checks to say a sale was "intended to satisfy the affirmative defense conditions of Rule 10b5-1(c)," which is the SEC's own wording. A checked box means the sale was scheduled months ahead. Leave it blank and the filer picked the day himself.
Dankberg's 400,000 shares on June 8 all carry the box. They went out in five blocks between $63.95 and $69.00 that day from an indirect holding, and the filing puts his balance at 1,082,196 shares afterward. It's the biggest sale in the table, and all of it was scheduled.
The blank boxes belong to five other people. Richard Baldridge, a director, is the biggest of them at 127,122 shares for about $5.05 million. Shawn Duffy sold 51,480 shares on one day last December with the box blank, and the filing left him a direct balance of 6,021 shares. Benjamin Palmer and Garrett Chase each have a mix of scheduled and unscheduled sales, as does general counsel Robert Blair. We've written up how these plans work in a separate piece, including what that checkbox does and doesn't promise a shareholder.
The quarter behind the run
Two days before Wise sold, Viasat reported its first quarter of fiscal 2027, the three months ended June 30. Revenue came in at $1.2 billion, down 1 percent from a year earlier. The company lost $52 million, an improvement on the $56 million it lost in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA fell 7 percent. Free cash flow was $72 million excluding non-recurring items.
The growth in the quarter sits almost entirely in the defense business. New awards in the Defense and Advanced Technology segment rose 22 percent and its backlog rose 32 percent, which the company called "record backlog and awards." Across all of Viasat, awards rose 10 percent and backlog rose 19 percent.
Dankberg's letter to shareholders opens on a quarter "marked by disciplined execution, operational progress" and reports that Viasat "secured the next phase of the Protected Tactical SATCOM-Global (PTS-G) program." It claims "our largest ever government new business pipeline." The letter is also blunt about the competition. "We understand that some segments of the market are clearly going to be more competitive than in the past," it says, followed immediately by "we believe we can be a healthy competitor." Near the end it allows that "the path forward will not be without challenges."
One of those competitors got smaller the same week. Hughes Satellite Systems, the EchoStar (ECHO) unit, filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions on Aug. 3 in the Southern District of Texas, after $1.5 billion of bonds came due. Hughes said it would use the reorganization to "address its maturing secured and unsecured debt, strengthen its capital structure." EchoStar itself stays out of the filing. VSAT closed at $81.29 that day, then closed the next session at $86.16, its highest close since June 30.
The Forms 4 stop at the trade, and motive stays off the form by design. All ten of these sales are legal and every one of them hit the SEC's clock on time. Directors and officers sell into tax bills and tuition, and holding too much of one stock is its own ordinary reason. Over a year that took the stock from $25.62 to $84.82, though, ten insiders sold $54.8 million and bought nothing back. New Viasat filings land on our insider tracker as they arrive, and it reads the plan box on every one of them. We ran this same count on CrowdStrike earlier this month, and looked at the rest of the satellite group after the SpaceX unlock here.
Sources
- SEC Forms 4 for Viasat, Inc. (CIK 0000797721) filed Aug. 10, 2025 through Aug. 10, 2026, 50 sale transactions across ten reporting owners, and no transaction code P in the same period
- SEC Form 4 for Theresa Wise filed Aug. 6, 2026 (accession 0001193125-26-338271), 2,500 shares at $84.69 on Aug. 4
- SEC Form 4 for Mark D. Dankberg filed June 9, 2026 (accession 0001193125-26-264582), 400,000 shares on June 8 between $63.95 and $69.00, balance 1,082,196
- SEC Form 4 for Shawn Lynn Duffy filed Dec. 16, 2025 (accession 0001193125-25-320963), 51,480 shares on Dec. 12, balance 6,021
- Viasat Q1 fiscal year 2027 shareholder letter and results, Form 8-K filed Aug. 4, 2026 (accession 0001193125-26-332896)
- Hughes Satellite Systems Corporation Chapter 11 announcement, Aug. 3, 2026, filed as EchoStar exhibit 99.1
- VSAT daily closing prices, Aug. 8, 2025 through Aug. 10, 2026
