Insider Trades: ASX directors bought and sold these stocks last week

Welcome back to the Insider Trades Series – The volume of director transactions continues to drop off as we head into quarterly earnings season. This week, we're recapping all the on-market trades of $10,000 or more that took place between 3 and 9 October.

The only large cap sell

In the past three years, Computershare CEO Stuart Irving has offloaded shares around September and October. Interestingly, the stock performed quite well after his sales in 2021 and 2022.

Red dots reflect when Stuart Irving was selling shares (Source: TradingView)

Earlier this month, Computershare announced plans to sell its US Mortgage Services business to Rithm Capital Corp for an estimated US$720 million. Citi views the sale as a "strategically sound decision which improves CPU’s quality of earnings, potentially suggesting it should trade at a higher multiple."

"CPU’s capital position appears strong ... [It] remains on the lookout for acquisitions and we continue to believe Governance Services is likely to present the most executable acquisitions in the near term with owner managers among the potential sellers," the analysts said.

The investment bank retained a Buy rating with a $29.00 target price on 9 October 2023.

Three large-cap buys

Atlas Arteria shares hit a 2-year low last week and that's around when CEO Graeme Bevans and Chair Fiona Beck started buying.

Atlas Arteria 5-year price chart (Source: Market Index)

The share price weakness coincides with the recent surge in bond yields. A benchmark like the Australian government 10-year bond yield briefly hit a 13-year high of 4.70% last week, which raises the discount rates and required yields and infrastructure stocks.

Top small-mid cap trades

Cyprium Metals shares were suspended back in February after it failed to secure funding for the restart of its Nifty Copper Project in the Pilbara region of WA. Fast forward to September, the company successfully raised $31.6 million at 4 cents per share or a steep 63.6% discount to its last close.

The stock finished its first session back on 21 September down 70.9% to 2.8 cents.

A July investor presentation states that the company's strategy is to: "Restart the Nifty operation with lower capital intensity and risk by developing a large-scale open cut mine utilising its significant sunk capital infrastructure in order to unlock Nifty’s +15 year, +900,000 tonne copper resource."

For context, the Nifty Project has over $450 million in sunk costs including the cost of exploration, feasibility studies, engineering, and early-stage construction activities. The high level of sunk costs has been a source of concern for investors as it raises the question of whether the project is economically viable.

With a board change and capital markets firm as a cornerstone investor, can Cyprium piece together the parts and bring Nifty into production? Or was it never meant to work out in the first place? We'll find out soon.