Insider Roundup

While analyst recommendations can be a hit or miss, insider transactions are usually more telling of a company’s future stock behavior. Insiders are major owners and/or management of a particular company. Here are some interesting finds on the most valuable, most bought, and most sold insider transactions of the past few weeks as found on TipRanks.

Largest Transactions:

The biggest insider transaction of the last two weeks was by Sanofi, another pharmaceutical company that bought 83,938 shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc REGN valued at $39,034,285 on January 12, filed January 14. Sanofi, a 22% owner of Regeneron, is jointly developing sarilumab, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. On January 7, both companies jointly announced that the FDA has accepted their submitted review of a biologics license application for this drug. A week later, Regeneron updated its 2016 expense guidance above analyst consensus and provided preliminary Q4 sales figures of flagship drug Eylea, in line with analyst consensus.

The second largest insider transaction of the last few weeks was made by 45% owner Forest Baskett, who bought 1.5 million shares of Ardelyx Inc ARDX common stock valued at $15 million ($10 per share) on January 13, filed January 14. On this day, the company announced a public offering of 8.625 million shares of common stock, including the right to exercise purchase of up to 1,125,000 additional shares of common stock.

Most Insider Buys:

The company with the most recent insider buys is Dyax Corp. DYAX, with 12 buys. All 12 insiders exercised their options of DYAX to buy common stock for different exercise prices. Gustav Christensen, CEO and President on the company, exercised 1,924,443 options of DYAX for the average exercise price of $3.39 (total amount of over $6M). On January 22, DYAX acquired Shire PLC. Originally announced in November, the all-cash deal is valued at $5.9 billion. For each share of DYAX, shareholders will receive $37.30.

Most Insider Sells:

Carnival plc (ADR) CUK had the most insider sells recently with 5 insiders selling shares of the company for various amounts. The insider who sold the most shares of this company was Stein Kruse, who on January 15 (reported January 19) sold 26,560 shares of the company at $49.91 per share, earning $1,325,609.60. Stein Kruse is the CEO of Holland America Group, which owns Carnival Plc.