Insider Trades: Directors bought and sold shares in these 16 ASX 200 companies last week

Welcome back to the Insider Trades Series – A weekly summary of on-market ASX 200 director transactions valued at more than $10,000. The trades have all taken place between 24 and 31 May 2024. Directors have up to 5 business days to notify the ASX of their trades.

Top ASX 200 Director Sells

Directors always tend to buy in bits but sell in lots. Here are some interesting observations about the above selldowns.

Wisetech: Founder Richard White and co-founder Maree Isaacs have offloaded approximately $180 million worth of shares (15 separate transactions) since mid-April. As we noted last week, this is generally not a cause for concern as Mr White has the tendency to offload millions of dollars worth of shares every year. Despite what might appear as aggressive selling, he still owns around 35% of the $32 billion company.

Boss Energy: Chief Executive Duncan Craib sold 3.75 million shares or approximately 72% of his holdings last week. The selldown sparked significant controversy and caused the stock to fall as much as 15% over the next three sessions. On one hand, the uranium sector has just emerged from a grueling decade-long bear market, where very few companies survived. To add some perspective, Boss shares are up more than 13,000% from its 2013 lows. So the argument could be made that management deserve to reap the rewards. On the other hand, Boss trades at a fairly lofty valuation relative to domestic and international peers, and the company has recently experienced abrupt changes to management, including the CFO and General Manager.

Pinnacle: Asset managers have been a major beneficiary of soaring equity markets. During February reporting season, Pinnacle reported net inflows of $4.5 billion, more than 500% above Macquarie forecasts. The stock is up around 15% in the past month and 31.5% year-to-date.

Eagers Automotive: Buying the dip

The automotive retail sector is doing it tough following several profit downgrades from listed players including Eagers, Bapcor and Peter Warren. More broadly speaking, earnings are under pressure amid weak consumer confidence, low levels of discretionary spending and competitive pricing among industry players. Eagers shares are down 30% year-to-date to levels not seen since July 2022.

Non-Executive Director Nicholas Politis is the company's largest shareholder and he's purchased approximately $4 million worth of shares since the 15% selloff earlier this month.

Dicker Data: Also dip buyers

Dicker Data also experienced a sharp selloff after its first quarter FY24 earnings (17 May) missed analyst expectations. The stock finished the session down 13% to a seven-month low. Citi analysts followed up the next day by retaining a Buy rating but cut its target price from $13.60 to $11.70. "The main concern for us from the update was the softer market conditions which appear to be delaying purchasing decisions from business which could push investments such as a PC refresh further to the right. We view this to be a delay to sales and not a structural change in DDR’s market position," the analysts said. The company's COO Vladimir Mitnovetski, CFO Mary Stojcevski and CIO Ian Welch have all stepped up with on-market buys in recent weeks.

Lendlease: Restructuring and profit hit

Lendlease provided a strategy update last week, which outlined plans to exit from overseas construction and wind down offshore developments. The company said it had identified $4.5 billion of capital to be released, with its US construction business as one of the potential assets for sale. The stock rallied 8% on the day of the announcement (27 May) but has since given back most of its gains. "While we see the start of execution on new strategy as positive, we do believe there is a long road ahead, and LLC will need to execute further to win trust back from shareholders and the broader investor base," Citi analysts said in a note. Nevertheless, Chief Executive Anthony Lombardo has been buying into the pullback.

Top ASX 200 Insider Buys