Notable Insider Buys in the Past Week: Biglari, Coty, Danaher, Foot Locker And More

• Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors when markets face uncertainty.
• This past week, some insiders add to their stakes in a retailer, a beauty products maker and a couple of conglomerates.
• A couple of biopharmaceutical companies saw insiders acquiring some shares as well.

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 from it. So insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors, particularly when there is uncertainty in the markets, as there was before and after the elections and as the pandemic worsens.

Though buy windows remain closed for some insiders during what is left of the earnings-reporting season, plenty of others continued to purchase shares despite some market volatility and economic uncertainty. Here are some of the most noteworthy insider purchases that were reported in the past week.

A Foot Locker, Inc. FL beneficial owner purchased more than 509,500 shares of this footwear retailer at $38.46 to $38.69 apiece early last week. That totaled almost $19.70 million, and it raised that owner's stake to more than 11.23 million shares. The total float is reported to be over 96 million shares. Pandemic-related store closures led to an analyst downgrade last week as well.

Stoke Therapeutics Inc STOK, which had a secondary offering of shares, saw one director indirectly pick up 375,000 shares. At a price of $39.00 per share, that added up to more than $14.62 million. Note that the 17.16 million-share stake also makes that director a beneficial owner. Also note that this biopharmaceutical company's chief executive officer sold more than 12.84 million shares last week.

Four Coty Inc COTY directors together recently bought more than 1.09 shares of this New York-based beauty products maker. At $5.80 to $7.36 per share, the total for these transactions came to over $6.86 million. Note that the share price is more than 100% higher since Coty reported a surprise fiscal first-quarter profit earlier this month. The stock closed most recently at $6.89 per share, within the above purchase price range.

An executive at Danaher Corporation DHR has added more than 26,700 shares of this conglomerate to his stake. At prices ranging from $226.14 to $226.37 per share, that cost him more than $6.05 million. That stake was listed as up to over 2.40 million shares. The stock saw an analyst downgrade last week, and the shares ended Friday's trading at $216.89 apiece, which is below the above purchase price range.

CEO Sardar Biglari returned to the buy window last week and paid an average of $125.55 each for over 5,500 more Biglari Holdings Inc BH shares. That cost him more than $694,500. Note that Biglari also bought more than $4.21 million worth of shares of his namesake conglomerate and restaurant operator in the prior week. The share price is up more than 28% since the company posted quarterly results earlier this month.

A Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Co Ltd BHVN director has added 5,000 shares to his stake, which is listed as more than 2.51 million shares. The latest purchase prices were between $89.36 and $90.00 apiece, which cost that director more than $447,700 early last week. Some other insiders were exercising options in the past week. The shares added more than 3% last week and were last seen trading at $91.36, which is above the director's purchase prices.

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Note that there also was some smaller amount of insider buying at chemicals company Ashland Global Holdings Inc. ASH, agricultural fertilizer maker CF Industries Holdings, Inc. CF, Keurig Dr Pepper Inc KDP and Qurate Retail Inc QRTEA, parent of OVC and Zullily, reported last week.

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

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