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Excite@Home chief sells $25 million in stock

Excite@Home chief executive Tom Jermoluk sells 500,000 shares worth approximately $25 million in the high-speed Internet access company.

Excite@Home chief executive Tom Jermoluk has sold 500,000 shares worth approximately $25 million in the high-speed Internet access company.

Jermoluk filed the necessary documents with federal regulators and executed the trade within the past week, Caroline Hughes, vice president of investor relations for Excite@Home, confirmed today.

The sale represents roughly 10 percent of Jermoluk's holdings in the company, Hughes said. The CEO owns about 5 million Excite@Home shares, although he also holds many more unexercised stock options, she said.

The high-tech industry generally is fond of using stock options as compensation or incentives for employees, particularly top-level managers. For example, Jermoluk received additional options as a bonus after sealing the deal to purchase Web portal Excite.

Jermoluk filed to sell $16 million in stock in May and has made several other sales in recent years.

The most recent sale came shortly after Excite@Home announced it would offer a tracking stock to put a separate valuation on the company's media assets and content properties. That strategic move came after months of speculation about the future of the Excite Web portal, which analysts have said was partly to blame for the company's depressed stock price.