$13 Million in CPC Stock Sold to Repay Loans : Market: Executives of the Laguna Hills company say the sales will pay for stock options they exercised last year.

Six officers of Community Psychiatric Centers Inc., including the chairman and president, recently sold company stock worth more than $13 million in order to repay loans from the company.

CPC Chairman James W. Conte said Wednesday that the stock sales by company insiders were done to pay for stock options the officers exercised last year and does not indicate that the managers anticipate any financial problems for the company.

Conte himself disposed of 150,163 shares of company common shares Nov. 9, according to filings with the Security and Exchange Commission. The stock sold for $28 a share.

Conte said he and other officers at CPC, which operates a chain of psychiatric hospitals, sold just enough of their stock--about 470,000 shares--to repay money they borrowed from the company more than a year ago to exercise stock purchase options. He said stock was given to the company to retire the debt rather than sold on the open market.

He said the officers exercised their stock options before CPC spun off its kidney dialysis business as a separately traded company on Aug. 31, 1989. In that way, he said, the officers were entitled to receive stock in the new company in the ratio of one share in the new company for every 10 shares held in CPC. The deadline for repaying the loans was Dec. 31, 1990, he said.

While acknowledging that some short sellers are betting on a downturn of the stock, Conte said he believes that they are being influenced by general problems in the industry and not by any concrete evidence that Community Psychiatric will flounder. Short sellers sell borrowed stock in hope of making a profit by replacing the borrowed shares later with shares purchased at a lower price. Conte said the company’s year-end earnings for 1990 soon will be published. He expects that the company will meet its projections of $70 million in net earnings for the 1990 fiscal year ending Nov. 30, which would be up 15% over last year for continuing operations.

“I think that they will be what Wall Street expects of us,” he said. “There is no bad news we see coming.”

In mid-December, CPC officials met with securities analysts in New York and commented favorably about the company’s prospects.

According to filings with the SEC, Richard L. Conte, CPC’s president, sold 76,617 shares for about $2.2 million on Dec. 13, shortly after the stock rallied on a company report that fourth-quarter hospital admissions were up 11%. Later in the month he sold another 10,000 shares for $28 to $28.50

However, James Conte noted that he sold his own stock in November before officials either met with analysts or knew about the hospital admission figures.

Other CPC insiders who sold stock were: Loren B. Shook, vice president of the company’s U.S. hospital division, who sold 120,141 shares for $29.38 a share; James P. Smith, treasurer and senior vice president, who sold 14,735 shares for $26.38 to $28.88 a share; Robert L. Green, a director, who sold 97,572 shares for $28 to $28.88 a share; and Hartly Fleischmann, a director, who sold 200 shares for a price not recorded.

The company’s stock Wednesday closed at $25.50, down 37.5 cents.