U.S. transgender billionaire Martine Rothblatt sells $5.5 million in United Therapeutics stock

American biotech tycoon Martine Rothblatt, the founder and chief executive officer of United Therapeutics Corp., sold about $5.5 million of the drugmaker's stock on Oct. 22, adding to a run of near-daily sales that has continued throughout October.

Rothblatt exercised options to buy 9,500 shares at $117.76 each and sold the same number of shares through family trusts, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The options, which vested between 2021 and 2023, were due to expire in March 2027.

The sales were made under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan she adopted on Nov. 7, 2025. Such plans let company insiders set the timing and size of share sales in advance, which protects them from claims that they traded on inside information. Hers runs until she has exercised 1,734,410 options or until Dec. 31, 2026, whichever comes first.

Under the plan, Rothblatt has sold 9,500 shares on almost every trading day this month, with each day's sales worth between about $5.1 million and $5.5 million. Her sales on Oct. 19, 20 and 21 brought in about $5.16 million, $5.26 million and $5.32 million. In all, she has sold more than $80 million of stock in October.

Shares near a record

The latest sale came as United Therapeutics stock rose 3.8% to $584.79 on Thursday, close to its 52-week high of $609.35 and well above the 52-week low of $409.07. The company, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, has a market value of about $25 billion.

After the sales, Rothblatt holds about 669,000 United Therapeutics shares directly and through family trusts, worth about $391 million at Thursday's closing price. She also holds options to buy about 176,000 more shares. Her base salary is $1.55 million, and the board set her total target pay for 2025, including a $14 million long-term stock award, at about $17.5 million.

United Therapeutics makes treatments for pulmonary arterial hypertension, a rare and life-threatening form of high blood pressure in the lungs. Its biggest product is Tyvaso, an inhaled version of the drug treprostinil. The company passed $3 billion in annual revenue for the first time in 2025.

Sales have come under pressure this year from competing drugs. In the second quarter, revenue fell 2% to $783.3 million, and Tyvaso revenue fell 4% to $452.6 million. Net income rose 8% to $333 million, and earnings per share climbed 13% to $7.27. The company has spent about $1.5 billion this year buying back its own shares.

Betting on new drugs and pig organs

Rothblatt is counting on new medicines to restart growth. The company has asked U.S. regulators to approve ralinepag, a once-daily pill for pulmonary arterial hypertension, and to expand the use of nebulized Tyvaso to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung-scarring disease. In a trial whose results were released in March, ralinepag cut the risk of a patient's condition getting worse by 55% compared with a placebo. The company expects decisions on both next year.

Rothblatt said in August, when the company reported second-quarter results, that she considers the two applications among the most important ever filed for rare lung diseases.

United Therapeutics is also developing pig organs for transplant into humans through its Revivicor unit, and it is opening two facilities to produce them in Minnesota and Texas.

Rothblatt, a lawyer and entrepreneur, co-founded Sirius Satellite Radio, now part of SiriusXM, before starting United Therapeutics in 1996 after her daughter was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension. She has led the company since then and also serves as its chairperson.