Insider Trades: An ASX director resigned and sold $15 million worth of shares (and 9 other buys)

Welcome back to the Insider Trades series, a summary of director transactions that have taken place between 13 to 20 April worth more than $10,000.

We typically look at insider activity for S&P/ASX 200 companies but activity has been relatively quiet since late March. This time round we included insider transactions for companies that have a market cap of more than $300 million.

Top Insider Transactions

Interesting Observations

A fund hits its target

MMA Offshore offers vessel, sub-sea and logistics services via its fleet of 18 vessels across Australia. The company has undergone a major turnaround, and that’s reflected in its recent share price performance: Up 100% in the past year but still down 22.6% in the last five years.

Non-executive director Peter Kennan resigned last week and sold a substantial $15.4 million worth of shares. He's also the Chief Investment Officer of the Black Crane Asia Pacific Opportunities Fund.

"Despite facing a prolonged challenging period, the Company has repaired its Balance Sheet and successfully transitioned into an integrated service provider across multiple markets," said Kennan.

"The Black Crane Asia Pacific Opportunities Fund has now attained its targeted investment returns from MMA and is therefore divesting its position to reallocate capital to alternative investments," he added.

While the selloff was quite substantial for the $420m company, it did not appear to be a cause for concern for investors. MMA shares are mostly unchanged since the divestment.

MRM Offshore 12-month chart (Source: Market Index)

Orora's boss hits sell

Orora's Managing Director and CEO Brian Lowe joined the business in 2011 to lead its Beverage Business Group and succeeded former CEO Nigel Garrad in September 2019. His sell represent's the first insider trade since April 2022.

Asset managers are buying

Insiders from a few listed funds including Australian Foundation Investment, QV Equities as well as micro cap ones (that aren't on the list above) like Associate Global Partners (ASX: APL) and London City Equities (ASX: LCE) have bought shares in the past week.

The share price performance of asset managers is highly leveraged to the performance of their underlying fund and as you can imagine, many aren't doing so well. AFI, QV Equities and APL are all trading around March 2022 levels.

AFI's insider buy represents the first insider buy since May 2022. Should this raise an eyebrow that maybe the worst for markets is over or perhaps some optimistic buying around 12-month lows?