Insider Buys Of The Week: Andeavor, Corcept, Portola

Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors.

A couple of biotech companies saw notable buying last week.

So did a oil and gas midstream company in the midst of a merger.

• Conventional wisdom says that insiders and 10-percent owners really only buy shares of a company for one reason — they believe the stock price will rise and they want to profit. So insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors, particularly with markets at all-time highs.

Here's a look at a few notable insider purchases reported in the past week.

Portola Pharmaceuticals

Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc PTLA saw a director step up to the buy window this past week. The total of 390,000 shares of this biopharmaceutical company acquired, at per-share prices ranging from $25 to $26.95, cost the advisor more than $10.07 million. Afterward, the total stake was listed as less than 450,000 shares out of almost 66 million outstanding.

Portola shares dropped sharply following disappointing quarterly results posted earlier this month. The stock ended the week trading at $28.17, so the timing of these purchases seems fortunate. The stock has changed hands between $24.63 and $64.56 in the past year, and the analyst's mean price target is $45.83.

Andeavor Logistics

Andeavor Logistics LP ANDX saw a director increase his stake again last week. The more than 19,500 shares of this San Antonio-based energy company acquired, at per-share prices between $49.63 and $50.25, cost him less than $975,000. But note that this director has purchased nearly $8.5 million worth of shares since the beginning of the month.

Andeavor and Marathon Petroleum MPC are in the process of merging in a $23-billion deal that reportedly will create the largest independent oil refiner in North America. Andeavor shares climbed more than 2 percent in the past week and were last seen trading at $50.49 each. That was a bit above the top of the director's purchase price range. Shares have traded as high as $55.21 in the past year.

Corcept Therapeutics

A Corcept Therapeutics Incorporated CORT director has picked up more than 35,600 shares of this cortisol-focused pharmaceutical company. The share prices for this purchase ranged from $12.79 to $13, and the transaction totaled more than $461,000. Also note that the same director bought more than $3.5 million in shares in the previous week.

Here too the shares tumbled in the wake of a disappointing earnings report earlier in the month. But the share price recovered more than 5 percent last week and closed Friday at $13.58, so it was a nice quick gain for this director for the latest batch. While the stock has traded as high as $25.96 a share in the past year, the mean analyst mean price target is just $18.08.

See also: Put Insider Sentiment To Work With This ETF 

At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.

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