Welcome to edition 475 of Insider Weekends. With earnings season in full swing, insider buying increased last week with insiders purchasing $75.89 million of stock last week compared to $10.39 million in the week prior. Selling also increased with insiders selling $584.61 million of stock last week compared to $450.43 million in the week prior. We are likely to see more interesting insider purchases over the next few weeks as more companies come out of their earnings related quiet periods.
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 to 7.7. In other words, insiders sold almost 8 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 43.36.
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. Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (APD): $230.55
Chairman, President and CEO Seifi Ghasemi acquired 20,000 shares of this atmospheric gases provider, paying $227.16 per share for a total amount of $4.54 million. Mr. Ghasemi increased his stake by 4.61% to 453,783 shares with this purchase.