I think the theory that they sold the shares to give them cash to exercise their options was put forth on this board, but I'm not sure. But I don't understand why that wasn't somehow made clear to the public (aka us) - it would have saved some teeth gnashing. 

But, the next question is, were the options that were exercised about to expire?  If they were, fine. But if the options had a long ways to go before expiry, the fact that management chose the time when the stock got to its high point, as opposed to waiting for it to go even higher, did send a message that they were not confident of it going higher. 

Their sale of 1,100,000 shares at about $1.50, would be about the same amount of cash that they hen apparently paid to exercise their options.