Welcome to edition 257 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased last week with insiders buying $86.26 million of stock compared to $143.37 million in the week prior. Selling increased with insiders selling $3.19 billion of stock last week compared to $1.83 billion 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 went up to 36.93. In other words, insiders sold almost 37 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 12.77. 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.
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Insider Sell Buy Ratio May 22, 2015
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:
1. MaxPoint Interactive, Inc. (MXPT): $8.76
Shares of this digital advertising services provider were acquired by 5 insiders:
- Director Len Jordan acquired 396,174 shares, paying $8.89 per share for a total amount of $3.52 million. These shares were purchased indirectly through Madrona Venture Fund IV, L.P.
- President, CEO, Chairman Joseph Epperson acquired 6,000 shares, paying $8.28 per share for a total amount of $49,666. Mr. Epperson increased his stake by 0.29% to 2.09 million shares with this purchase.
- Chief Operating Officer Gretchen Joyce acquired 3,000 shares, paying $8.40 per share for a total amount of $25,200. Ms. Joyce increased her stake by 0.62% to 487,364 shares with this purchase.
- Chief Technology Officer Kurt Carlson acquired 2,895 shares, paying $8.29 per share for a total amount of $24,005. Mr. Carlson increased his stake by 0.64% to 452,895 shares with this purchase.
- Director Lynnette Frank acquired 2,700 shares, paying $9.43 per share for a total amount of $25,465.
This was an interesting group of cluster purchases as it comes less than 2 months after MaxPoint priced its IPO at $11.50 a share on March 6, 2015. While revenue is growing at a high double digit clip (up 87% in Q1), losses have also kept pace, with the company posting a net loss of $8.1 million in Q1 2015 compared to a loss of $4.2 million in Q1 2014.
