Notable Insider Buys Of The Past Week: AT&T, Halliburton And More

Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors.

A CEO led a number of insiders in taking advantage of a share offering last week.

Directors added shares of a telecom giant and an oilfield services leader.

Conventional wisdom says that insiders and 10% 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 during periods of uncertainty.

Insiders continued to add shares despite overall market volatility and global economic gloom. Here are some of the most noteworthy insider purchases reported in the past week.

Halliburton

Ahead of an announcement that Halliburton Company HAL would suspend operations in Venezuela, a director added 350,000 shares to his stake. At a share price of $8.68, that cost the director almost $3.04 million and raised their stake to nearly 575,000 shares.

The stock ended last week's trading at $8.86 per share, so that director's purchase seems well-timed. Halliburton stock is up more than 44% since its year-to-date low in March.

Darden Restaurants

Darden Restaurants, Inc. DRI CEO Eugene Lee and a number of executives and directors took advantage of a share offering at $58.50 apiece. Lee bought more than 25,600 shares for about $1.50 million. Altogether, around 77,800 shares were purchased by insiders last week.

The shares popped more than 8% in the past week and closed most recently at $68.82 each. Darden Restaurants stock is more than 64% higher than the year-to-date low seen in March.

AT&T

AT&T Inc. T saw a director purchase via trust 36,000 shares of this Dallas-based telecom giant last week at prices ranging from $29.34 to $29.41 apiece. That totaled more than $1.05 million and preceded last week's announcement of the retirement of CEO Randall Stephenson.

AT&T stock ended the week trading at $29.71, above that director's purchase price range. Shares are up less than 4% from the year-to-date low in March, compared with the S&P 500's 23% gain in that time.

Groupon

A Groupon Inc GRPN director shelled out an average of 95 cents per share for 1 million shares of this Chicago-based company. That cost him about $950,000 and brought his stake to nearly 2.63 million shares of this online marketplace provider.

Back in March, the company's chief executive and chief operating officers stepped down, and the company more recently furloughed employees. The latest close at $1.11 per share was above the director's purchase price range and came after the shares gained more than 70% from the March low.

Synnex

A director at SYNNEX Corporation SNX indirectly picked up 10,000 shares for an average of $71.47 each. That totaled about $714,700. Note that the same director purchased 52,000 shares at the end of March.

The California-based IT services provider posted better-than-expected earnings back in March, and its shares were last seen trading at $76.21. That is above the director's latest purchase price. The stock has risen almost 16% since last month's year-to-date low.

See also: Gates Likens Coronavirus Pandemic To World War II, Says 'Impossible To Overstate The Pain'

In addition, note that there was some amount of insider buying at financials Citizens Financial Group Inc CFG, Evercore Inc EVR, KeyCorp KEY and Pinnacle Financial Partners PNFP last week as well.

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

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