Three AMETEK Executives Logged Same-Week Tax Sales After Fresh Stock Awards

Three AMETEK insiders reported same-week March 2026 stock dispositions, but the filings point to tax withholding after equity awards rather than open-market dumping. The cluster involves David Zapico, John Hardin, and Tony Ciampitti, all tied to AMETEK (AME).

Key Facts

Insider	Date	Code	Shares	Context
David Zapico	2026-03-18 to 2026-03-22	A and F	Two grants plus 5,108 withheld shares	Grant-related tax withholding after fresh awards
John Hardin	2026-03-19 to 2026-03-22	F	457 withheld shares	Small tax settlement tied to compensation
Tony Ciampitti	2026-03-19 to 2026-03-22	F	435 withheld shares	Same pattern as the other AMETEK filings

What Happened

Zapico's filings show two March 18 award entries followed by code F transactions on March 18, March 19, and March 22. In SEC insider reporting, code F usually means shares were withheld to satisfy tax obligations tied to vesting or award delivery. Hardin and Ciampitti reported the same basic pattern: small March 19 and March 22 code F transactions around the same compensation window.

That distinction matters. A code F filing is mechanically different from the kind of discretionary open-market sale that shows up as code S. Readers looking only at headline share reductions can easily miss that these March filings were compensation clean-up, not a collective decision to de-risk AMETEK.

Why It Matters Now

The timing came just weeks after AMETEK told investors it delivered record fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results. On February 3, 2026, the company said fourth-quarter sales reached $2.0 billion, adjusted EPS hit $2.01, and free cash flow reached a record $527.3 million. Management also guided to mid-to-high single-digit sales growth in 2026 and adjusted EPS of $7.87 to $8.07. In that context, a same-week cluster of tax-withholding dispositions reads far differently from a wave of bearish selling.

AMETEK also announced a dividend increase in February and continued its acquisition cadence, including the LKC Technologies deal. That backdrop helps explain why a routine compensation event is still worth noting: the company is entering 2026 with record backlog, active capital deployment, and a stock that already reflects a high-quality industrial-tech narrative compared with peers such as Honeywell (HON), Roper Technologies (ROP), Danaher (DHR), and A. O. Smith (AOS).

What Investors Should Watch

• Whether future AMETEK filings switch back to code S open-market sales rather than code F tax settlements.
• Whether Zapico keeps retaining a large personal stake after the March grant cycle.
• How AMETEK executes against its 2026 sales and EPS outlook after the record 2025 finish.
• Whether acquisition activity continues to support the premium multiple industrial investors often assign to AME.

Bottom Line

The March 2026 AMETEK insider cluster looks like a compensation-and-tax event, not a synchronized open-market exit. That does not make the filings irrelevant, but it does change the signal investors should extract from them.