As the market has sold off, insiders are starting to take advantage of lower prices. Take note of this graph supplied by the Washington Service.
Buys
ET Energy Transfer LP Pipeline behemoth ET recently ended their two class share structure of general partner and limited partners consolidating the company into one entity, ET. Insiders have been steady buyers. Last week Chairman of the Board Kelcy bought 3 million shares at an average price of $15.34. ET and other pipeline companies have had a rough week as the price of crude oil collapsed due to fears of supply glut and global slowdown.
Z Zillow Group Dir Hoag and Chairman of the Board Richard Barton bought over $44 million of Zillow Group at average prices of $27.07 to $29.16. Zillow Group’s stock has dropped more than 30 percent in the last two weeks, but co-founder Rich Barton is betting big on the online real estate company’s future.
Barton purchased close to 700,000 shares of Zillow stock on the open market over the last few days, valued at more than $19.2 million combined. This is the first time Barton has bought stock on the open market, Zillow representatives confirmed.
Zillow stock has dropped more than 52 percent since early August, partly due to investor fears of a declining real estate market. The company makes money by selling tools and advertising to real estate agents, helping them drive more quality leads. The Company also went into the business of principal in buying and selling homes which may pit them against their real estate sale agent advertising base.
Jazz Jazz Pharmaceuticals Director Seamus Mulligan bought $7.2 million at an average price $144.56. Jazz Pharmaceuticals price target lowered to $184 from $194 at RBC Capital.RBC Capital analyst Randall Stanicky lowered his price target on Jazz Pharmaceuticals to $184 after its Q3 results, saying the company again “missed the mark” on Vyxeos whose launch continues to disappoint. The analyst keeps his Outperform rating on Jazz Pharmaceuticals, citing the “robust” 9% volume growth for Xyrem and its anticipated near-term launches, but believes that unlocking value for investors may take “longer than anticipated”.
EQT EQT Corp Four insiders bought $688.5k of North America’s largest natural gas driller. The electrification of the automobile fleet will require an increase in the electrical output of America’s grid. Natural gas currently supplies over 30% of the source of power for the grid and is projected to rise higher as we have abundant supplies and the infrastructure in place to utilize it. Long term secular trends bode well as well as the export of LPG is projected to grow.
Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Singer upgraded EQT Corporation to Buy with a $23 price target. The analyst believes the company’s production guidance calling for 5% asset sale-adjusted growth in 2019 is conservative. Further, he thinks concerns around management’s five-year outlook are overdone. EQT’s valuation is attractive following the recent underperformance of the shares. Singer tells investors in a research note from theflyonthewall.com
HD Home Depot Inc Three insiders bought $2.6 million of Home Depot stock at average prices of $169.62-$174.6. On Sept. 12, shares of The Home Depot Inc. (HD) reached an all-time high of $215.43. Shares have since begun to reverse course, however. On Nov. 19, Director Mark C. Vadon purchased 11,500 shares of the home improvement retailer at a price 19.1% below that high. As shown on the graph below, the $2 million buy is Vadon’s largest of four at HD and first since November 2016. Vadon’s purchase increased his holdings of HD stock by 37%. According to the Washington Group, https://ezinsider.washingtonservice.com/ShowNewsArticle.aspx?ArticleID=17434&pp=105
Sales
Nothing too out of the ordinary showed up last week in sales. It’s become increasingly difficult to read the tea leaves regarding the $ millions of dollars of sales every week due to the proliferation of the Sarbanes Oxley era loophole of 10b5-1 trading plans.
In this report, we examined open market purchases from employees and directors ending the week of October 5 2018. Insiders sell stock for many reasons, but they generally buy for just one – to make money. As a standard, we only look at material amounts of money, $200 thousand or more, as anything less could just be window dressing. The bar is different with selling, because the natural state of management is to be sellers. This is because most companies provide significant amounts of management compensation packages as stock. Therefore, with selling, we analyze for unusual patterns, such as insiders selling 25 percent or more of their holdings or multiple insiders selling near 52 week lows.Another red flag are large planned sale programs that start without warning. We generally ignore 10 percent shareholders as they tend to be OPM (other people’s money) and not the SMART money we are trying to go to school on. Although this info is available for free from the SEC’s Web site , Edgar, we subscribe to the Washington Service as they provide a way to manage and make sense of the vast realms of data.
To learn more about our strategy, visit our website here. We welcome your comments on our analysis. We may own positions, long or short, in any of these names and are under no obligation to disclose that.