MDA CEO Michael Greenley at the company’s Brampton facility in 2021. Mr. Greenley exercised about a million stock options on Aug. 18 at a unit price of $9.60, then sold those shares on the public market for $45 each.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The chief executive officer of space technology company MDA Space Ltd. made $35.7-million exercising stock options, three weeks before the company’s share price plunged 25 per cent when U.S. telecom EchoStar Corp. unexpectedly cancelled a major contract.
Michael Greenley disclosed the recent stock sale in filings on SEDI, an electronic system maintained by Canadian securities regulators to track stock ownership by directors and officers of public companies.
Mr. Greenley exercised about a million stock options on Aug. 18 at a unit price of $9.60, the filings show. He then sold those shares on the public market for $45 apiece.
In a statement, MDA MDA-T spokesperson Amy MacLeod said the company maintains a robust insider trading policy, which sets out rigorous standards and procedures for insider transactions.
“Mr. Greenley’s sale of MDA Space shares on August 18, 2025 was appropriately completed in strict accordance with this policy: The transaction occurred within a designated open trading window, subsequent to the disclosure of our Q2 2025 financial results, and was preceded by all required advance notifications. Mr. Greenley continues to hold significant equity in MDA Space,” she said in an e-mail.
“As stated in our press release on September 8, 2025, the termination of the EchoStar contract was the result of a sudden and unexpected shift in EchoStar’s business strategy and was promptly and publicly disclosed by MDA Space, as required.”
The exercise represents a third of all the stock options that Mr. Greenley has held since MDA went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2021, and about half of what he held at the end of 2024.
Mr. Greenley held about three million options obtained through the company’s legacy stock option plan as of the initial public offering in 2021, with exercise prices between $6 and $15.36, due to expire in 2030. He has not received stock options since. At the end of 2024, he held about 2.2 million options. He currently has 604,650 options left.
After MDA went public, shares in the Brampton, Ont.-based satellite manufacturer remained flat for several years before starting a steady climb about 12 months ago, as the company secured several large manufacturing contracts.
The stock jumped 18 per cent on Aug. 1, the day the company announced its $1.8-billion deal to build satellites for EchoStar, and reached an all-time high of $46.36 on Aug. 18, the day Mr. Greenley exercised his stock options.
On Monday, three weeks later, the company’s shares dropped 25 per cent after EchoStar unexpectedly cancelled the contract after what MDA described as a “sudden change” to EchoStar’s business strategy. At the same time, EchoStar said it would sell its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses to SpaceX for US$17-billion.
In a call with analysts Monday, Mr. Greenley noted EchoStar’s financial difficulties. Earlier this year, EchoStar did not make certain interest payments, and currently carries US$25-billion in long-term debt.
“They were obviously coming out of some challenging financial times, and so we put extra effort into ensuring our protection in that contract,” he said.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission launched an inquiry into EchoStar’s spectrum deployment in May. The company warned the FCC in June that “any decision to upend the 2 GHz band’s sharing rules would threaten the viability of EchoStar’s current operations and future plans.”
U.S. President Donald Trump encouraged the parties involved to reach “an amicable resolution” in June. On Aug. 26, EchoStar announced the sale of some of its spectrum to AT&T.