Three stocks insiders are buying and selling: ANZ, Northern Star and Aus Finance
A summary of the top director transactions from last week.
Source: iStock
Mentioned
KEY POINTS
- Northern Star CEO sold 16% of his holdings
- ANZ CEO adds almost $1 million to his existing $13.3 million stake
- Australian Finance CEO sells amid a sharp downturn for the company's shares
A summary of the top director transactions from Monday, 12 December to Friday, 16 December. You can find out more about why director transactions are a big deal here.
In short: Research shows that insiders buy more when their stocks are cheap and buy less when they are expensive.
Top 10 insider moves by value
Ticker | Company | Date | Director | Type | Price | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Traka Resources Ltd | 12/12/2022 | Joshua Pitt | Buy | $0.74 | $4,067,772 | On-market trade. | |
Northern Star Resources Ltd | 16/12/2022 | Stuart Tonkin | Sell | $10.74 | $2,396,222 | On-market trade. | |
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd | 12/12/2022 | Shayne Elliott | Buy | $23.54 | $948,944 | On-market trade. | |
Australian Finance Group Ltd | 13/12/2022 | Malcolm Watkins | Sell | $1.52 | $608,157 | On-market trade. | |
Region Group | 14/12/2022 | Mark Fleming | Sell | $2.78 | $300,102 | On-market trade. | |
Prescient Therapeutics Ltd | 14/12/2022 | Steven Yatomi-Clarke | Exercise | $0.14 | $270,000 | Exercise of options. | |
Ausgold Ltd | 14/12/2022 | Richard Lockwood | Buy | $0.05 | $120,083 | On-market trade. | |
Region Group | 16/12/2022 | Mark Fleming | Buy | $2.77 | $110,800 | On-market trade. | |
Cadence Capital Ltd | 12/12/2022 | Karl Siegling | Buy | $0.92 | $102,429 | On-market trade. |
Interesting observations
Northern Star CEO selldown
CEO Stuart Tonkin sold approximately 16% (~223,000 shares) of his overall stake in Northern Star. He retains ~1.16 million shares post selldown, or approximately 0.1% of the company.
Northern Star shares are up around 55% since September and rallied close to levels not seen since February 2021.
Most broker notes from December were neutral-related on Northern Star.
UBS downgraded to NEUTRAL from Buy with a $11.10 target price
Macquarie is OUTPERFORM rated with a $12.00 target price
Morgan Stanley is EQUAL-WEIGHT rated with a $10.90 target price
Northern Star chart since Feb 2020 (Source: TradingView)
ANZ CEO loads up
CEO Shayne Elliot purchased an additional 3,834 ANZ shares, doubling his direct holdings to 7,417 (approximately $176,800 at today's share price). Indirectly, Mr Elliot holds 558,812 shares ($13.3 million) via employee share plans and trustees.
ANZ shares are down -4.2% year-to-date but up 13.5% from June lows.
The latest broker notes date back to October, where most were Buy rated.
UBS is BUY rated with a $30.00 target price
Credit Suisse is OUTPERFORM rated with a $29.00 target price
Ord Minnett is ACCUMULATE rated with a $27.10 target price
Including other target prices from Morgans, Macquarie, Citi and Morgan Stanley, the average target price sits at $27.54
ANZ year-to-date chart (Source: TradingView)
Australian Finance CEO lets go at lows
Founding Director Malcolm Watkins sold 400,000 of the ~16,000,000 indirect shares held via his family trust. Interestingly, he's decided to sell a parcel while the company's shares are down -45% year-to-date and trading at close to levels not seen since May 2020.
Australian Finance Group 5-year chart (Source: TradingView)
An error by Traka
Traka is a $6.2m market cap gold junior working towards unlocking the potential of the Mt Cattlin Project in WA. For a director to buy a little over two-thirds of the company's market value just doesn't quite make sense.
The numbers all add up in the 'Change of Director's Interest Notice'. However, the announcement states that he bought the shares at an average of $0.74. Perhaps it was supposed to say $0.0074.
