Insider Trade Report Edition #189: The Week’s Notable Buys And Sales

Welcome to edition 189 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying declined last week with insiders purchasing $64.80 million of their stock compared to $78.41 million in the week prior. Selling increased with insiders selling $876.61 million of stock last week compared to $575.8 million in the week prior.

Sell/Buy Ratio: The insider Sell/Buy ratio is calculated by dividing the total insider sales in a given week by total insider purchases that week. The adjusted ratio for last week increased to 13.53. In other words, insiders sold more than 13 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 7.34. We are calculating an adjusted ratio by removing transactions by funds and companies and trying as best as possible only to retain information about insiders and 10% owners who are not funds or companies.

Insider Sell Buy Ratio January 31, 2014

Note: As mentioned in the first post in this series, certain industries have their preferred metrics such as same store sales for retailers, funds from operations (FFO) for REITs and revenue per available room (RevPAR) for hotels that provide a better basis for comparison than simple valuation metrics. However metrics like Price/Earnings, Price/Sales and Enterprise Value/EBITDA included below should provide a good starting point for analyzing the majority of stocks.

Notable Insider Buys:

Some of the insider purchases that did not make the top 5 list but are worth exploring include a purchase by the CFO of VeriFone Systems (PAY), a cluster purchase by the insiders of Fastenal (FAST) and a cluster purchase by insiders of First Niagara Financial Group (FNFG).

1. Regis Corp. (RGS): $12.33

Shares of this hair salons company were acquired by 3 insiders:

• Director Daniel Gordon Beltzman acquired 1,502,507 shares, paying $12.16 per share for a total amount of $18.26 million. These shares were purchased indirectly through Birch Run Capital Advisors.
• President & CEO Daniel J. Hanrahan acquired 20,000 shares, paying $12.23 per share for a total amount of $244,560. Mr. Hanrahan increased his stake by 9.91% to 221,839 shares with this purchase.
• Director Stephen E. Watson acquired 2,000 shares, paying $12.17 per share for a total amount of $24,340. Mr. Watson increased his stake by 4.39% to 47,566 shares with this purchase.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Regis Corp. here.