The Ousted Chairman Wants to Sell $5.4 Million of L3Harris Stock

The officer who filed a Form 144 with the SEC today proposing to sell about $5.4 million of L3Harris Technologies stock is Christopher Kubasik — the chairman and CEO the company's board fired two weeks earlier, citing conduct that violated its Code of Conduct. He is selling roughly 21,916 shares at today's market price of about $248, and he is doing it through two family trusts, half of the shares from one called "KUBASIK, C GRAT BKG 2025 1.0" and the rest from another called "KUBASIK, C GRAT BKG 2024 5.0."

Which is a wonderfully specific way to learn what a Form 144 actually is. It is a "Notice of Proposed Sale of Securities," filed under Rule 144 of the Securities Act. It is not a sale, and it is not a promise to sell. It is a heads-up — the paperwork a person who counts as a "control person" (an officer, director, or big holder) has to file because they want to sell "restricted" stock, which is what Kubasik's L3Harris shares are, acquired as restricted stock units back between 2018 and 2022 and vested since. Restricted shares can't just be dumped on the open market; Rule 144 is the set of gates (holding period, volume limits, a certification that you don't know any material adverse non-public facts) you have to walk through to liquidate them into the public float. The form says the person proposes to make the sale; it does not say they actually will, or when.

Now the trust names. The basic point is that this is estate-planning machinery, not a market-timing tell. A GRAT — grantor retained annuity trust — is an old trick: you put assets into an irrevocable trust, pay yourself a fixed annuity for a set number of years, and whatever appreciation is left over at the end passes to your beneficiaries with most of the gift-tax sting removed. Kubasik set up these trusts in 2024 and 2025, before whatever the board found, presumably to move LHX wealth out of his estate over time. The trusts held the stock; to fund the annuity payments the GRAT owes its grantor, the trustee has to generate cash — and the easiest cash is selling the very L3Harris shares the trust holds. So a 144 from a GRAT is what a person who planned to shed stock for estate reasons looks like, mechanically, whether or not the swap to a new CEO happened.

That is the frame worth holding onto, because the headline version — ex-CEO dumps shares after being fired — reads like a vote of no confidence, and $5.4 million is the opposite of that. It is about 0.01% of L3Harris's $46 billion market value, and 21,916 shares out of roughly 186 million outstanding. Officers file these notices all the time as incentive grants vest; earlier this spring, for instance, several L3Harris officers filed 144s to sell a few thousand shares each. The dramatic part here is the name on the form, not the size, and the name is dramatic for a reason the sale itself doesn't illuminate.

The reason, of course, is that Kubasik was ousted in mid-August because the board said certain conduct was "not consistent with the values of the Company," while insisting it had nothing to do with financial reporting, controls, customer relationships, or operational performance. Sam Mehta took over as CEO and chief financial responsibility was otherwise reorganized; shares fell about 4% that day on the uncertainty. Since then the stock has kept sliding — down about 15% year to date and roughly a third from its 52-week high above $379, to around $248, where Kubasik's notice is priced. None of which changes what the product's backlog (a record $40.7 billion in bookings last quarter) or the reaffirmed 2026 guidance of around $23.2–23.7 billion in revenue and $3 billion in free cash flow will deliver if management meets it.

For a retail eye, the disciplined read is to separate the two stories. The Form 144 is a small, pre-built, trust-wrapped liquidation by an ousted executive — plumbing that tells you more about estate planning than about whether the defense contractor's numbers hold. The actual investment question is the other one: a sudden governance rupture at the top, a stock de-rated hard from its highs, and a new CEO asking you to trust a guidance the board just reaffirmed while deposing his predecessor. Watch the financial reports and whether the reaffirmed numbers hold. The $5.4 million notice of intent, filed through the same trusts that have been doing this estate work for a year, is not the place to find your signal.