Notable Insider Buys In The Past Week: Arvinas, Dropbox, Trinity

• Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors.
• Some notable insider buys last came as other insiders were selling.
• Some insiders were making return trips to the buy window.

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 with markets near all-time highs.

Arvinas

An Arvinas Inc ARVN director stepped up to the buy window this past week. That director took advantage of a secondary stock offering to indirectly pick up 680,000 shares of this biopharmaceutical company at $22.00 apiece. That transaction totaled about $14.96 million.

Note that the company's chief science officer sold 10,000 shares last week as well. The stock closed Friday at $30.49 a share, after hitting a 52-week high of $30.85 last week. The shares popped about 18% in the past week and are more than 120% higher year to date. Analysts currently anticipate the share price will go to $33.50.

Trinity Industries

A director at Trinity Industries Inc TRN scooped up more than 677,000 shares of this railcar maker last week. At prices ranging from $21.28 to $21.63, that cost him more than $14.54 million, and it lifted his stake to almost 24.9 million shares. An executive also sold less than 3,500 shares in the past week.

The same director also bought 1.65 million shares in the wake of the latest earnings report. The stock was last seen trading at $21.19 a share, after retreating about 2% last week. The 52-week trading range is $16.03 to $26.63, and the analysts' consensus recommendation is to buy the shares.

Dropbox

Dropbox Inc DBX saw its chief executive officer, Andrew Houston, purchase 500,000 shares via trust in the past week. At prices ranging from $19.03 to $19.36 a share, that totaled almost $9.57 million. Note that the company's chief financial officer sold more than 27,000 shares recently.

Analysts were bullish on Dropbox after it posted better than expected third-quarter results. Its shares were trading at $19.21 each on last look, within the CEO's purchase price range. The stock has traded as high as $26.49 in the past year, but the consensus analyst price target is up at $29.42.

See Also: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Sells 20M Shares Amid IPO Lockup Expiration

Note that ongoing insider buying at Assured Guaranty Ltd. AGO and Kinder Morgan Inc KMI continued last week as well. Also, Board Chair Ronald Sugar recently purchased shares of Uber Technologies Inc UBER but other directors have been selling.