Benzinga's Insider Buys Of The Week: Arconic, Ocwen Financial And More

• Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors.
• Post-earnings sell-offs prompted some insiders to buy shares this past week.
• And a prominent fund manager added to his stake in one financial company.

Conventional wisdom says that insiders and 10-percent owners 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 during periods of uncertainty.

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

Ocwen Financial Corp OCN saw beneficial owner Leon Cooperman, CEO of Omega Advisors, scoop up more than 1.34 million shares of this company. At prices ranging from $3.15 to $3.20 apiece, those transactions totaled more than $4.2 million. Cooperman also bought shares in January, and the latest purchases brought the stake to more than 5.77 million shares. Ocwen has more than 133 million shares outstanding.

The West Palm Beach, Florida-based company is a mortgage loan servicer and asset manager. Ocwen shares closed Friday's trading at $3.20 apiece, still near Cooperman's latest purchase price. Despite declining fractionally this past week, the stock is still up almost 3 percent year-to-date.

Kite Realty Group Trust KRG had two directors purchase more than 133,000 shares altogether of this real estate investment trust. The purchase prices ranged from $15.04 to $15.08 per share, and the transactions totaled more than $1.7 million combined.

The disappointing guidance that came with Kite's latest earnings report led Bank of America Merrill Lynch to downgrade the stock. Shares retreated more than 6 percent this past week to end trading at $14.48 Friday, less than the directors' purchase prices. The year-to-date decline in the share price is more than 27 percent.

At Lakeland Financial Corporation LKFN, a director has acquired 25,000 shares of this Indiana-based regional bank. At per-share prices between $45.55 and $45.77, the value of that transactions totaled more than $1.1 million. Note that other insiders sold more than 28,000 shares around the same time.

Lakeland posted solid fourth-quarter results in late January. Last week, the shares pulled back more than 2 percent — compared to a more than 4-percent decline in the S&P 500 — and closed on Friday at $96.69. The stock is now down over 3 percent since the beginning of the year.

See also: When Insider 'Greed' Is Good

An Arconic Inc ARNC director took advantage of last week's volatility to acquire 40,300 additional shares of this engineered products manufacturer. At an average of $24.80 per share, that cost him more than $999,500. The transaction followed the most recent quarterly report.

While Arconic did beat fourth-quarter consensus estimates, the outlook for the full year disappointed Wall Street. The stock closed most recently at $24.66, after sliding around 9 percent this past week. The share price now is in the same neighborhood it was six months ago.

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

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