Welcome to edition 238 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased significantly last week with insiders buying $104.71 million of stock compared to $18.4 million in the week prior. Selling also increased with insiders selling $728.27 million of stock last week compared to $258.37 million in the week prior. The majority of the insider buying was related to biotech investors Baker Brothers participating in a secondary offering by Synageva Biopharma (GEVA) by picking up a million shares to the tune of $94.19 million. With the first quarter earnings season just around the corner, we are likely to see muted insider activity over the next few days.
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 6.58. In other words, insiders sold almost 7 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 14.04. 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 9, 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. Biglari Holdings Inc. (BH): $400
Chairman and CEO Sardar Biglari, acquired 6,411 shares of this restaurant holding company, paying $405.09 per share for a total amount of $2.59 million. These shares were acquired indirectly through The Lion Fund.
This is the third week in a row that purchases by Mr. Biglari have topped our list.
You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Biglari Holdings Inc. here.
