Welcome to edition 199 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased last week with insiders purchasing $41.55 million of their stock compared to $49.28 million in the week prior. Selling plunged with insiders selling $530.53 million of stock last week compared to $1.65 billion in the week prior. We often see a sharp decline in insider transactions in the first few weeks of every quarter and this decline could be attributed to insiders reluctance to trade ahead of earnings.
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 dropped down to 12.77. In other words, insiders sold nearly 13 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 33.41. 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 April 11, 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 $30.21 million in additional purchases of the truck and diesel engine manufacturer Navistar International (NAV) by its Director Mark Rachesky and an additional purchase of the biotech company Retrophin (RTRX) by its CEO Martin Shkreli.
1. Ameresco, Inc. (AMRC): $7.08
President and CEO George P. Sakellaris acquired 111,995 shares of this energy efficiency solutions provider, paying $7.22 per share for a total amount of $808,965. Mr. Sakellaris increased his stake by 4.42% to 2,647,621 shares with this purchase.
