CEO Roberts sells Comcast shares worth $11.4 million, donates $1.4 million worth

Comcast Corp. chief executive Brian L. Roberts last week sold $11.4 million worth of Comcast stock and donated shares worth an additional $1.4 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, Roberts' first since 2007, was for personal financial-planning purposes, Comcast senior vice president D'Arcy Rudnay said.

The gift was to the University of Pennsylvania, in partial fulfillment of a $15 million donation for the Roberts Proton Therapy Center, a cancer-treatment facility at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Rudnay said.

The transactions accounted for 2.3 percent of the shares owned by Roberts, she said.

Roberts' Comcast holdings, some of which are held by private companies and in trusts, are split among three classes of shares. He controls 9.44 million unlisted Class B shares. Those shares have 15 votes each, giving Roberts one third of the company's overall shareholder voting power, despite his relatively small economic stake.

A little more than a half-million of the shares sold last week were from a class of 747 million Class A Special nonvoting shares. Roberts still owns 9.7 million of those shares, according to the regulatory filing.

Roberts also sold 91,539 of the company's Class A shares, which are entitled to 0.1373 votes per share. He still owns 288,039 of the company's 2 billion outstanding Class A shares, the filing said.

When Roberts last sold Comcast shares, in May 2007, he received between $26.80 and $27 per share for Class A Special shares. Those shares sold last week for between $18 and $18.37, or about 32 percent less.