Something significant is happening when staid Dell Technologies is up 31% on its latest quarterly earnings. A massive uptick in capex spending is underway, directly attributable to the stampede to embrace AI.

Finviz Chart

Name: Jeffrey A. Davis
Position: Chief Financial Officer
Transaction Date: 2024-04-01 Shares Bought: 1,800 Average Price Paid: $136.00 Cost: $244,794
Company: Dollar Tree Inc. (DLTR)

Dollar Tree, Inc. operates retail discount stores. Dollar Tree and Family Dollar are the company’s two business segments. It runs stores under the Dollar Tree and Dollar Tree Canada brands, as well as distribution centers in the United States and Canada. The Family Dollar segment operates general merchandise retail discount stores that sell consumable merchandise such as food and beverages, tobacco, health and personal care, household chemicals, paper products, hardware and automotive supplies, diapers, batteries, and pet food and supplies; and home products such as housewares, home décor, and giftware, as well as domestics such as comforters, sheets, and towels. It also sells clothing, fashion accessories, and shoes; seasonal and electronics merchandise, such as Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day; and personal electronics, such as pre-paid cellular phones and services, stationery and school supplies, and toys. Dollar Tree, Inc. was formed in 1986 and is headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia.

Jeff became Dollar Tree’s Chief Financial Officer in October 2022. From 2006 to 2018, he held several financial leadership positions, including Treasurer of Walmart Stores, Inc., Senior Vice President of Finance & Strategy and Chief Financial Officer for Walmart’s U.S. Segment, Chief Financial Officer of J.C. Penney Company, Inc., and Chief Financial Officer of Darden Restaurants, Inc. Since October 2018, Jeff has been the Chief Financial Officer of Qurate Retail Group, Inc., a leading retailer and media conglomerate that owns seven retail brands, including QVC, HSN, and Zulily. He has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Penn State University and a master’s degree in business administration from the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. Since 2019, Jeff has been a director of Laboratory Corporation of America.

Opinion:  Dollar General and Dollar Tree are expected to reach a combined $83.1 billion in annual revenues by 2027, which would be a nearly 26% increase from 2022, according to Coresight Research’s analysis of estimates by S&P Global Market Intelligence.  For my ‘dollar,’ though, I’d invest somewhere else.

 

Finviz Chart

Name: Mark S Peek
Position: Director
Transaction Date: 2024-04-03 Shares Bought: 10,000 Average Price Paid: $22.36 Cost: $223,596
Company: SentinelOne Inc. (S)

SentinelOne, Inc. is a cybersecurity firm that operates both in the United States and overseas. Its Singularity Platform provides AI-powered autonomous threat prevention, detection, and response capabilities across an organization’s endpoints, cloud workloads, and identity credentials, allowing for seamless and autonomous protection against a wide range of cyber-attacks. Additionally, it provides endpoint protection, endpoint detection and response, cloud and identity security, attack surface management, mobile endpoint security, xdr power tools, watchtower, and vigilant MDR. Sentinel Labs, Inc. was the company’s previous name until rebranding as SentinelOne, Inc. in March 2021. SentinelOne, Inc. was established in 2013 and is based in Mountain View, California.

Mark S. Peek has served on the board of directors since May 2021. Since February 2018, Mr. Peek has been Executive Vice President, Managing Director, and Head of Workday Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Workday, Inc., or Workday, a prominent provider of enterprise cloud services for finance and human resources. Mr. Peek was Workday’s Co-President from June 2015 to February 2018, as well as its Chief Financial Officer from June 2012 to April 2016. Before joining Workday, Mr. Peek was President, of corporate Operations, and Chief Financial Officer of VMware, Inc., a supplier of corporate infrastructure virtualization solutions, from April 2007 until January 2011. From March 2000 to April 2007, Mr. Peek worked as Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer for Amazon.com, Inc., a technology firm. From December 2011 to June 2012, Mr. Peek sat on Workday’s board of directors. Mr. Peek earned a B.S. in accounting and international finance from Minnesota State University.

Opinion:  Peek has yet to make any money on his recent open market buys to date.  On March 13th Sentinel  report Q4 : Annualized recurring revenue, ARR, increased 39% to $724.4 million as of January 31, 2024. Customers with ARR of $100,000 or more grew 30% to 1,133 as of January 31, 2024. Dollar-based net retention rate was approximately 115% yet profits are still elusive.

Finviz Chart

Name: Jeffrey Gould
Position: President And CEO
Transaction Date: 2024-04-03 Shares Bought: 24,598 Average Price Paid: $16.85 Cost: $414,510
Company: BRT Apartments Corp. (BRT)

Name: Matthew J Gould
Position: Senior Vice President
Transaction Date: 2024-04-03 Shares Bought: 24,598 Average Price Paid: $16.61 Cost: $408,564
Company: BRT Apartments Corp. (BRT)

BRT is an internally operated real estate investment trust, or REIT, that owns, operates, and, to a lesser extent, participates in joint ventures that own and manage multi-family properties. As of December 31, 2023, the firm (i) owned 21 multi-family properties comprising 5,420 units; (ii) had ownership interests in seven multi-family properties totaling 2,287 units through unconsolidated companies; and (iii) owned various assets through consolidated and unconsolidated subsidiaries. The 28 multi-family homes are dispersed throughout 11 states, with the majority centered in the Southeast and Texas. The company’s multi-family homes are often garden apartments, mid-rises, or townhouses with amenities such as a clubhouse, swimming pool, laundry room, and cable television access.

Jeffrey serves as President, CEO, and a member of the Board of Directors at BRT Apartments Corp. BRT offers joint venture interests in multifamily buildings across the country and buys them directly. Jeff is also a Vice President of Georgetown Partners, Inc. (the Managing General Partner of Gould Investors L.P.), an equity-oriented real estate company; Senior Vice President and Member of the Board of Directors of One Liberty Properties, Inc., a publicly traded single tenant triple net leased company; and Majestic Property Management Corp. Jeff is a member of both the CEO Organization and the World Presidents Organization’s New York Big Apple Chapter. Jeff received a BA from the University of Michigan. Jeff and his wife Suzanne have six children and reside in Old Westbury, New York.

Matthew J. Gould is a businessman who has led five different companies. He is currently the Chairman & CEO of Gould Investors LP, Director & Senior Vice President of BRT Apartments Corp., Senior Vice President of Majestic Property Management Corp., Chairman & CEO of Georgetown Partners, Inc., Chief Executive Officer of Rainbow Realty Group LLC, and CEO of Rainbow MJ Advisors LLC. Matthew J. Gould also serves on the boards of Sportsvite LLC, Halsa Holdings LLC, and MJ Real Estate Investment Trust. He is also the Chairman of One Liberty Properties, Inc., Senior Vice President of REIT Management Corp., and Senior Vice President of Majestic Property Management Corp. Mr. Gould earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a graduate degree from the Cardozo School of Law in 1984.

Opinion: It will be challenging to get exciting returns from REITs while the Federal Reserve is offering 5.5% risk free rates on T-Bills.


Follow us on Twitter for real-time insider buying alerts at https://twitter.com/theinsidersfund

 You can be an insider, too– by clicking here

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 with any stock market experience 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 of 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, we analyze unusual patterns with selling, 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, are horrendously poor. Also, planned sales that 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 on which we are trying to read the tea leaves. I say generally because some 10% shareholders are great investors. Think Warren  Buffett 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 probes 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.

This blog is solely for educational purposes and the author’s own amusement.  Think of the blog as part of my personal investment journal that I am willing to share with the DIY investor.  There are also many parts that I am not willing to share if I think it could influence trading action or be detrimental to the Fund’s partners. We could be long, short, or have no position at all in any of the stocks mentioned and express no written or implied obligation to disclose any of that.

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,

Harvey Sax
Insomniac Hedge Fund Guy