Chairman Powell’s scheme to put the inflation genie back in the bottle is unraveling fast. He created a bank run last month, which according to Jamie Dimon, is far from over. The next crack in the mantle will likely occur around the mushrooming U.S. deficit. The interest payments alone are projected to exceed the amount spent on national defense by the year 2025. As much as the Fed tries to raise interest rates to tame inflation, the futures market spits in their face, inverting the yield curve in ways we’ve rarely seen.
There are few purchases this week, perhaps due to the quarterly earnings blackout or perhaps just due to the lack of compelling values. Remember, it just takes one good idea to make you richer. In this post, we might have three of them. We hope you can find some value here.
You can be an insider, too– by clicking here
Name: Rosalind G Brewer
Position: CEO
Transaction Date: 2023-03-29 Shares Bought: 10,000 Average Price Paid: $33.95 Cost: $339,510.00
Company: Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.(WBA)
Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., a Delaware corporation, is a leading integrated healthcare, pharmacy, and retail Company that serves millions of consumers and patients daily and has a 170-year history of community service. The Business is proud of its contributions to healthy communities, a healthy planet, a diverse workplace, and a viable marketplace. Walgreens Boots Alliance is a signatory to the UN Global Compact and follows its principles-based approach to responsible Business. Through its portfolio of retail and business brands, which includes Walgreens, Boots, and Duane Reade, as well as increasingly global health and beauty product brands such as No7, NICE!, Soap & Glory, Finest Nutrition, Liz Earle, Botanics, Sleek MakeUP, and YourGoodSkin, the Company provides customers with convenient, omnichannel access. In-house product research and development skills complement the Company’s worldwide brand portfolio.
Rosalind Brewer was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. in March 2021. She is also a member of the WBA Board of Directors. From October 2017 until January 2021, Ms. Brewer was Starbucks’ Chief Operating Officer and Group President. From February 2012 until February 2017, she was President and Chief Executive Officer of Sam’s Club, a membership-only retail warehouse club and part of Walmart, Inc. Beginning in 2006, Ms. Brewer held multiple senior leadership roles at Walmart. Before joining Walmart, she was President of Kimberly-Clark Corporation’s Global Nonwovens Division from 2004 to 2006 and held numerous managerial roles at Kimberly-Clark starting in 1984.
Opinion: Rosalind has presided over 3 years of wealth destruction at Walgreen’s. Could someone have done a better job? WBA has gone nowhere in twenty years of being a public company.
Name: Edgar R. III Smith
Position: Director
Transaction Date: 2022-01-06 Shares Bought: 17,109 Average Price Paid: $23.39 Cost: $400,220.00
Company: Business First Bancshares Inc.(BFST)
Name: William K Hood
Position: Director
Transaction Date: 2022-01-06 Shares Bought: 3,664 Average Price Paid: $21.88 Cost: $80,151.00
Company: Business First Bancshares Inc.(BFST)
Business First Bancshares, Inc. is a financial holding company headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is also the parent company of b1BANK, formerly Business First Bank. This community-based financial institution provides a full range of banking products and services and is the state-chartered banking association for Louisiana. According to the corporation, a bank should be evaluated on the value it contributes to the operations of its clients. According to the business, local bankers with extensive market knowledge who are given decision-making authority and backed by centralized risk management procedures and cutting-edge technology are the best suited to meet the demands of clients. To better serve its customers, the company’s growth strategy essentially entails finding and hiring experienced teams of bankers in attractive regions.
Edgar R. Smith is a businessman who has led five distinct organizations. Mr. Smith now holds the positions of Chairman, President, and CEO of Latch Oil, Inc., President of Big 4 Trucking, Inc., President and Director of Emerald Partners LLC, and Chairman of CAM2 International LLC. Along with being on the boards of First Guaranty Bancshares, Inc. and First Guaranty Bank (Hammond, Louisiana), Edgar R. Smith is also a Smith & Hood Holding Co. LLC co-owner.
William K. Hood now serves as President of Hood Automotive and Chairman & President of Smith & Hood Holding Co. LLC. Also, he serves on the boards of First Guaranty Bank and First Guaranty Bancshares, Inc. (Hammond, Louisiana).
Opinion: Another community bank crushed by Chairman’s Powell disastrous mismanagement of monetary policy. There’s probably opportunity here but not much liquidity. BFST traded only 52,476 shares last Thursday.
Name: John C Hadjipateras
Position: President and CEO/10% Owner
Transaction Date: 2023-03-30 Shares Bought: 30,000 Average Price Paid: $19.73 Cost: $591,900.00
Company: Dorian Lpg Ltd.(LPG)
Dorian was founded on July 1, 2013, under the rules of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is based in the United States, and specializes in LPG transportation. Dorian and its subsidiaries, particularly, are focused on owning and operating VLGCs in the LPG shipping market. Since 2002, the company’s founding executives have handled boats in the LPG shipping sector. The boats in the Helios Pool may operate on the spot market, on contracts of affreightment, or COAs, or on time charters of no more than two years. All boats, including those in the Helios Pool, get in-house commercial and technical management services from Phoenix.
John C. Hadjipateras is the Board’s Chairman, President, and CEO. Since 1972, Mr. Hadjipateras has been actively engaged in the administration of maritime enterprises. Mr. Hadjipateras was the Managing Director of Peninsular Maritime Ltd. in London from 1972 until 1992 and served as Eagle Ocean’s President. He has been on the board of the Greek Shipping Cooperation Committee, the Intertanko Council, the Baltic Exchange since 1972, and the American Bureau of Shipping since 2011. He also served on the Board of Advisors of Georgetown University’s Department of Language and Linguistics and is a trustee of Kidscape, a renowned charitable organization in the United Kingdom.
Opinion: On the surface this looks interesting but I am concerned about the much larger sales of stock by Director Coleman.
Name: Matthew J Gould
Position: Senior Vice President
Transaction Date: 2023-04-04 Shares Bought: 11,944 Average Price Paid: $18.74 Cost: $223,796.00
Company: BRT Apartments Corp.(BRT)
BRT Apartments Corp. is an internally managed real estate investment trust, or REIT, that specializes in the acquisition, management, and, to a lesser extent, the development of multifamily properties. The company’s primary interests include multifamily property ownership, management, and development. The company typically owns multifamily properties like townhomes, mid-rise apartments, or garden apartments that offer residents access to amenities like a clubhouse, swimming pool, laundry rooms, and cable television. The typical length of a residential lease is one year, and security deposits up to the amount of one month’s rent may be required. These properties have a large percentage of their units leased at market rates.
Matthew J. Gould has served as the CEO of 5 separate organizations. He currently holds the positions of Chairman of Gould Investors LP, Director and Senior Vice President of Majestic Property Management Corp., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Georgetown Partners, Inc., Chief Executive Officer of Rainbow Realty Group LLC, and Chief Executive Officer of Rainbow MJ Advisors LLC. Majestic Property Management Corp. is a subsidiary of Gould Investors LP. In addition, Mr. Gould serves as chairman of One Liberty Properties, Inc., director and senior vice president of BRT Apartments Corp., and senior vice president of REIT Management Corp. He is also on the boards of Sportsvite LLC and Halsa Holdings LLC. Both the University of Michigan and Yeshiva University awarded Mr. Gould undergraduate and graduate degrees.
Opinion: BRT has a current dividend yield of 5.32%. There have been suggestions that a decade of low interest rates will ultimately lead to an oversupply of apartments. Conventional wisdom is that all real estate is local. By that they mean that the suburbs of Chicago is a completely different market than downtown Miami or the ski resort of Aspen. I have to believe that the persistent buying by the Gould family is a strong measure of confidence in their local market.
Name: Joshua G James
Position: Founder and CEO/10% Owner
Transaction Date: 2023-03-31 Shares Bought: 429,810 Average Price Paid: $14.11 Cost: $6,065,744.00
Company: Domo Inc. (DOMO)
Domo Business Cloud is a contemporary business intelligence software platform that allows procedures vitally reliant on business intelligence data to be completed on-the-fly, in as little as minutes or seconds at scale. Domo’s Business Cloud is meant to alter how enterprises are managed and allow clients to go fast, large, and bold, from marketing to operations, HR to finance, IT to product development, and supply chain to sales. Data throughout the organization is gathered, saved, processed, sorted, analyzed, displayed, and shared using Domo’s Business Cloud. Algorithms and machine learning may be used to data to generate warnings and encourage actions.
Josh James founded Domo in October 2010, a software-as-a-service firm changing the business intelligence sector. Before starting Domo, Josh was the CEO of Omniture, which he co-founded in 1996 and took public in 2006; from 2006 to 2009, he was the youngest CEO of a publicly listed business. Josh is the creator of CEO.com, Lightstorm, and Silicon Slopes, a non-profit organization that promotes the interests of Utah’s high-tech sector. Josh serves on Demand Media, Rakuten, and Save The Children boards. He is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders, a global group devoted to and recognized for their demonstrated leadership and promise to create the future.
Opinion: James is a pedigree CEO who sold Omniture to Adobe for $1.8 Billions in 2019 and the founder of DOMO. Domo is a Tableau competitor. Salesforce purchased Tableau that same year he sold Omniture for over $15 billion. This is a large buy and I’m all in on it now. I don’t know if greased lightening can be put back in the bottle but at $509 Million market cap and enterprise value slightly higher, there is definitely money to be made here with just a modest improvement. The combination of belt tightening and better revenue growth with the founder, Josh James returning as CEO with his new CFO and team, this could work big but it’s a hat trick for sure going up against Microsoft Business Power and their newly acquired springboard with Open AI. 4th quarter earnings call transcript here
Name: Kevin Weil
Position: President, Product & Business
Transaction Date: 2023-04-03 Shares Bought: 274,000 Average Price Paid: $3.64 Cost: $997,113.00
Company: Planet Labs PBC. (PL)
Planet’s goal is to employ space for the benefit of life on Earth by constantly photographing the planet and making societal change visible, approachable, and a reality. The firm takes daily medium- and high-resolution images of the planet. The business designs, build, and operates the biggest fleet of Earth observation satellites in history, using the hundreds of satellites in orbit to collect this rich data. Satellite data and analytics on many significant phenomena, including deforestation, agriculture, climate change, biodiversity, and global supply networks, reveal actionable insights. With the federal, state, and municipal governments, as well as big business and governmental sectors such as agriculture, cartography, forestry, banking, and insurance, the organization today serves over 880 clients.
Kevin Weil has been President of Product and Business at Planet Labs since April 2021, where he is in charge of the company’s go-to-market strategy. He brings together the Product, Software Engineering, Sales, and Marketing teams to ensure optimal alignment as Planet develops. He offers a range of cutting-edge geospatial products and solutions to clients. Kevin has a track record of providing market-changing client solutions while guiding software and data product groups through periods of hyper-growth. Before coming to Planet, Kevin worked at Facebook as the Vice President of Products for Novi, where he oversaw the development of a digital wallet and a range of financial services on the Nova blockchain platform. Kevin oversaw Instagram’s consumer, growth, and monetization products as vice president of products before joining Facebook.
Opinion: Sounds like a good idea, right? But how do you make money at this is a difficult question to answer.
Name: Thurman J Rodgers
Position: Director
Transaction Date: 2023-04-06 Shares Bought: 86,666 Average Price Paid: $2.45 Cost: $212,332.00
Transaction Date: 2023-04-03 Shares Bought: 131,906 Average Price Paid: $2.30 Cost: $303,384.00
Transaction Date: 2023-04-05 Shares Bought: 89,566 Average Price Paid: $2.26 Cost: $202,419.00
Company: FTC Solar Inc. (FTCI)
FTC Solar, Inc. was formed in the state of Delaware in 2017. The firm is a worldwide supplier of innovative solar tracker systems backed up by proprietary software and value-added engineering services. The company’s purpose is to deliver unique products, software, and services that optimize energy production and cost savings for consumers and aid in the worldwide expansion and acceptance of solar power. Trackers dramatically improve the amount of solar energy generated at a solar installation by rotating solar panels during the day to maintain an ideal orientation relative to the sun. The Voyager trademark is presently used to sell the main tracker system. Voyager is a next-generation two-panel in-portrait single-axis tracker device that delivers industry-leading performance and simplicity of installation, according to the firm.
Mr. Thurman was the director of FTC Solar Inc. in 2017. Thurman John Rodgers is a businessman who created Cypress Semiconductor Inc. and Rodgers Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp., as well as 11 other firms. He also serves on the boards of 11 different corporations. Dr. Rodgers has previously served as Chairman of The Society of Semiconductor Industry Seniors, Chairman of SunPower Corp., Director of AgigA Tech, Inc., Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Rodgers Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp., President, Chief Executive Officer, Treasurer, and Director of Spansion Inc., and Chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association. Thurman Dartmouth College awarded John Rodgers an undergraduate degree, while Stanford University awarded him a Ph.D. and a graduate degree.
Opinion: Thurman has the Midas touch these days after spinning up Enphase out of SunPower. We’re in on this name. It’s a two horse race, ARRY and FTCI
Name: Philip Liang
Position: Director
Transaction Date: 2023-03-28 Shares Bought: 74,300 Average Price Paid: $2.32 Cost:$172,227
Transaction Date: 2023-03-27 Shares Bought: 73,900 Average Price Paid: $2.07 Cost: $152,973
Transaction Date: 2023-03-23 Shares Bought: 73,500 Average Price Paid: $1.71 Cost: $125,538
Transaction Date: 2023-03-24 Shares Bought: 60,125 Average Price Paid: $1.65 Cost: $99,146
Company: Vicarious Surgical Inc. (RBOT)
Vicarious Surgical Inc. is integrating miniature robotics, computer science, and 3D visualization to create the Vicarious System. This single-incision surgical robot takes physicians inside the patient to conduct minimally invasive surgery or MIS. The company’s breakthrough next-generation robotics technology aims to boost the efficiency of surgical operations, improve patient outcomes, and lower healthcare costs. The company’s goal is to bring the next generation to robotic-assisted surgery to eliminate the inadequacies of open surgery and existing laparoscopic and robot-assisted MIS. A visionary team of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, leads it. The business has created many prototypes and has pre-submission meetings with the FDA to ensure everyone is on the same page with the regulatory approach. The company intends to submit a de novo application with the FDA for ventral hernia surgeries as the first indication.
Mr. Philip Liang has been a member of the board of directors since the Business Combination Closing in September 2021, and he previously served on the Legacy Vicarious Board. Mr. Liang formerly served as a managing partner of E15VC, a worldwide technology venture firm. He is also a Board Member of CaeliVascular and E15VC. Mr. Liang guides rising growth firms and investors through the venture capital life cycle. Mr. Liang is on the boards of directors of many E15VC-affiliated firms. Mr. Liang graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 with a Master of Science in Media Laboratory. Mr. Liang’s credentials for service on the board of directors include past board experience as a member of the Legacy Vicarious Board, as well as business and financial expertise at E15VC.
Opinion: More buying by a VC backer is encouraging. Busted SPACS offer challenges as well as opportunities. We’re in it for the long haul, come hell or high water as they say.
Follow us on Twitter for real-time insider buying alerts at https://twitter.com/theinsidersfund
Insiders sell the stock for many reasons, but they generally buy for just one – to make money. You’ve always heard the best information is inside information. Everyone who has any experience at all in the stock market pays close attention to what insiders are doing. After all, who knows a business better than the people running it? Officers, directors, and 10% owners are required to inform the public through a Form 4 Filing any transaction, buy, sell, exercise, or any other within 48 hours of doing so. This info is available for free from the SEC’s Web site, Edgar, although we subscribe to SECForm4 as they provide a way to manage and make sense of the vast realms of data. I’ve tried a lot of vendors. SECForm4 is one of the smaller ones but I like supporting Frank. He is not arrogant. He’s helpful and has great prices. He also trades on his own data so I like people that eat what they kill.
The bar is different from selling because the natural state of management is to be a seller. This is because most companies provide significant amounts of management compensation packages as stock and options. Therefore, with selling, we analyze unusual patterns, such as insiders selling 25 percent or more of their holdings or multiple insiders selling near 52-week lows. Another red flag is large planned sale programs that start without warning. Unfortunately, the public information disclosure requirements about these programs, referred to as Rule 10b5-1 is horrendously poor. Also planned sales that just pop up out of nowhere are basically sales and are seeking cover under this corporate welfare loophole. I also generally ignore 10 percent shareholders as they tend to be OPM (other people’s money) and perhaps not the smart money we are trying to read the tea leaves on. I say generally because some 10% shareholders are great investors. Think Warren Buffett, Icahn, and others
Of course, insiders can also be wrong about their Company’s prospects. Don’t let anyone fool you into believing they never make mistakes. Do your own analysis. They can easily be wrong, and in many cases, maybe most cases have no more idea what the future may hold than you or me. In short, you can lose money following them. We have and we curse aloud, what were they thinking!
We like Fly on the Wall for keeping up with what events might be happening, analysts’ comments, and whatever else could be moving the stock. Dow Jones news service is an essential tool but many services pick up their feed like they do Bloomberg. For quick financial analysis, it’s hard to beat Old School Value.
A big callout to my assistant Ambreen who sets up this conversation by listing the notable buys that I’ve identified. She probs the 10k for a reasonable description of the business. I’ve found that to be the most accurate and succinct place to find out what a business actually does. The websites and marketing material are just that, poorly disguised marketing material for many. I should know that better than most if you at my past involvement in building the 1st websites for many Fortune 500 companies.
No one tracks and understands insider behavior better than us. We’ve been doing it religiously since 2001 when I quit being an insider myself and devoted myself full-time to managing my personal investments. Needless to say, past good fortune is no guarantee of future success. We may own positions, long or short, in any of these names and are under no obligation to disclose that.
This blog is solely for educational purposes and the author’s own amusement. Don’t rely on this blog. Think of the blog as part of my personal investment journal that I am willing to share with the DIY investor. We welcome your comments on our analysis but please do your own research. Investing with The Insiders Fund is for qualified investors and by Prospectus only. Nothing herein should be construed otherwise. THE INSIDERS FUND prefers to invest in companies at or near prices that management has been willing to invest significant amounts of their own money in but we have no requirement to do so. We also invest in many companies in anticipation of future insider buying or with the expectation that there is none at all.
You can be an insider, too– by clicking here
Prosperous Trading,
