Insider Weekends – September 25, 2015

Insider buying decreased last week with insiders buying $45.88 million of stock compared to $281.51 million in the week prior. Selling also declined with insiders selling $442.94 million of stock last week compared to $501.83 million in the week prior.

Sell/Buy Ratio: The insider Sell/Buy ratio is calculated by dividing the total insider sales in a given week by total insider purchases that week. The adjusted ratio for last week increased to 9.65. In other words, insiders sold almost 10 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 1.78. We are calculating an adjusted ratio by removing transactions by funds and companies and trying as best as possible only to retain information about insiders and 10% owners who are not funds or companies.

Insider Sell Buy Ratio September 25, 2015

Note: As mentioned in the first post in this series, certain industries have their preferred metrics such as same store sales for retailers, funds from operations (FFO) for REITs and revenue per available room (RevPAR) for hotels that provide a better basis for comparison than simple valuation metrics. However metrics like Price/Earnings, Price/Sales and Enterprise Value/EBITDA included below should provide a good starting point for analyzing the majority of stocks.

Notable Insider Buys:

1. Sears Holdings Corporation (SHLD): $24.67

Chief Executive Officer Edward S. Lampert acquired 267,472 shares of this department stores chain, paying $24.97 per share for a total amount of $6.68 million. Mr. Lampert increased his stake by 0.91% to 29,531,152 shares with this purchase.

It was interesting to see Mr. Lampert also pick up $18 million worth of Land’s End (LE) last week. Land’s End was spun out of Sears last year and generated $500 million in proceeds for Sears in the form of a dividend from Land’s end.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Sears Holdings Corporation here.

P/E: N/A Forward P/E: N/A Industry P/E: 16.71 P/S: 0.1 Price/Book: N/A EV/EBITDA: -6.42 Market Cap: $2.63B Avg. Daily Volume: 1,016,030 52 Week Range: $19.08 – $48.25

2. Five Below, Inc. (FIVE): $34.31

Shares of this specialty value retailer were acquired by 2 insiders:

Director David M. Mussafer acquired 90,000 shares, paying $33.35 per share for a total amount of $3 million. These shares were purchased indirectly by Sunley House Capital Master Limited Partnership.

President and CEO Joel D. Anderson acquired 5,000 shares, paying $33.53 per share for a total amount of $167,650. Mr. Anderson increased his stake by 31.03% to 21,113 shares with this purchase.