Credit: Shutterstock photoWelcome to our daily roundup of top insider trades. Here's a look at the most significant inside sales and purchases filed with the SEC on Thursday, May 30, 2013.
Purchases: The real estate finance and investment management company Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc. ( BXMT ) saw four insider purchases: Blackstone Holdings III LP, a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group ( BX ), bought 1,960,784 shares for $49,999,992, both Directors John Schreiber, who is also a Partner and Co-Founder of Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, and Michael Nash, the CIO of Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies, bought 29,264 shares for $746,232 each, and President and CEO Stephen Plavin bought 19,608 shares for $500,004. A self-managed company, and formerly known as Capital Trust, Inc. until its December 2012 acquisition, Blackstone Mortgage Trust specializes in credit-sensitive products, with most of its investments going into loans and securities backed by commercial real estate assets. On May 29 the company announced the closing of a public offering of 25,875,000 Class A common stock shares, at the price of $25.50 per share: Gross proceeds totaled $660 million and will be used to originate and purchase loans through the company's new senior mortgage lending program in the US and Europe. After a crash in its price in 2008, the company's stock traded no higher than $5 and generally around $3, but had a major uptick beginning on May 7 that has held steady, with the price now $27.41, for a 1038.59% gain since this time last month.
The Greenwich, Connecticut-based hedge fund Silver Point Capital bought 100,000 shares of automotive systems and components company Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. (OTCMKTS:COSH) for $4,675,000. Through its subsidiaries, including Cooper-Standard Automotive, the company manufactures and sells fluid-handling, body-sealing, and anti-vibration components, systems, and modules for automakers worldwide. On May 24 the company announced that its Board of Directors had approved a securities repurchase program for up to $50 million of its outstanding common stock. The stock ceased trading yesterday at 11:35 a.m. after a major drop and jump up from $47.25 to $45.32 and back to $47.25 within less than an hour. The stock's price has a seen a year-to-date gain of 24.24% and is up 30.89% since this time last year.
The holding company Steel Excel (OTCMKTS:SXCL), which focuses on capital redeployment and identifying new business operations, bought 113,130 shares of independent oil field services contractor Forbes Energy Services ( FES ) stock for $406,743. Forbes Energy provides a wide range of well services to its oil and natural gas producing clients, including fluid hauling, fluid disposal, well maintenance, plugging and abandonment, and tubing testing, to name a few. Purchases made by Steel Excel have constituted all of the insider action at Forbes Energy since January 6 when President and CEO John Crisp bought 133,333 shares. Since then, Steel Excel has purchased company stock eight times, acquiring 851,768 share since then, increasing the holding company's total stake to 3,178,008 shares and making it the majority shareholder of Forbes Energy. The company' stock price has increased 35.57% YTD but is down 31.54% since this time last year.
The New York-based hedge fund Glenhill Advisors bought 87,200 shares of global software solutions company Lionbridge Technologies ( LIOX ) for $260, 451, increasing its total stake in the company to 8,337,080 shares. Lionbridge provides language, content, and testing solutions for international companies to help them establish presence in foreign countries, especially where a foreign language is spoken. Glenhill Advisors has purchased Lionbridge stock six times since May 13, buying 1,147,950 shares in that interval, worth $3,512,727 at the current stock price of $3.06. The company's stock price is down 24% YTD and is up 1.5% since this time last year.
For insider sales of note, see the chart below.
Source: InsiderInsights.com | Key to Insider Title and Trans Type Codes
An important note from Jonathan Moreland, founder of Insider Insights :
In a victory for common sense, it has been proven profitable -- by both academic studies and (more importantly) the experience of your fellow professional investors -- to monitor the trading behavior of company executives, directors, and large shareholders in the stocks of firms of which they're registered as "insiders."
Please note, however, that the lists above are strictly factual; they are not buy and sell recommendations. Dollar value is only one metric to assess the importance of an insider transaction, and, frankly, often not even the most important metric that determines if an insider transaction is significant.
At InsiderInsights.com, we find new investment ideas just about every day using these and more intricate insider screens to determine where we should focus our subsequent fundamental and technical analysis. And while stocks don't (or shouldn't) move up or down based on insider activity alone, insiders tend to be good indicators of when real stock-moving events like earnings surprises, corporate actions, and new products may be in the offing.
Jonathan Moreland is also the author of " Profit From Legal Insider Trading."
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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
