Insider Trades: Liontown directors buy the dip and two beaten-up explorers catch a bid

A summary of the top director transactions from Monday, 16 January to Friday, 20 January.

The following table has been modified to only include on-market trades and exercise of options.

Our colleague Chris Conway previously talked about why ‘insider moves’ are a big deal. You can read more about the research and findings about director transactions here.

Top 11 insider moves by value

Stocks of interest

Liontown: Directors buy the dip

Last Friday, Liontown announced a massive blowout in the costs associated with bringing its Kathleen Valley lithium project into production.

“The combination of optimisation, additional scope and cost escalation has resulted in Kathleen Valley’s estimated capital cost to first production from the process plant increasing to $895m,” the company said in a statement. To add some perspective, a November 2021 definitive feasibility study (DFS) expected initial capital costs to sit around $473 million.

The announcement triggered a volatile day for Liontown shares, with some notable price points including:

• Open: -3.0% to $1.48

• Low: -14.7% to $1.28

• Close: -8.3% to $1.37

Amidst all the volume and volatility, Liontown Chairman Timothy Goyder loaded up almost $1.5m worth of shares at an average price of $1.31.

At current prices of $1.48 – that’s a tidy 13% gain in just two days.

Source: TradingView

Andromeda Metals: Trying to bottom

Andromeda shares were obliterated in 2022 after a DFS study for the company’s ‘Great White’ halloysite-kaolin project – failed to live up to expectations. The study downgraded the internal rate of return, which measures the profitability of a project, from 175% to 36%.

Halloysite-kaolin is a type of clay mineral that’s used in a variety of industrial applications including as a filler and coating in the paper and packaging industry, an ingredient for ceramics and source of alumina for aluminium.

The stock fell almost -50% over two days in early April 2022 and finished 2022 down -76%.

Since last September, the stock has been trading around the 4-5 cent level. More recently, it popped to 6 cents to mark a five month high. 

Source: TradingView

Kingwest Resources: Another bottoming chart

Kingwest Resources follows a similar narrative, where a set of disappointing drill results set the stock back -29% in June 2022.

“Whilst we have not yet intersected economic grades in the first two holes ... widespread low grade gold mineralisation demonstrate that we are drilling within a large and prospective system," noted CEO Ed Turner.

The stock would continue to grind lower over the next few months before bottoming around the 3.5 cent level. In the past two weeks, it has managed to push above the 4.0 cent level.

Source: TradingView