Notable Insider Buys at Allovir, Xerox And Many More

• Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors during periods of uncertainty.
• A notable activist investor added to his stake in an old-school tech company.
• Health care tech companies saw some insiders buying last week.

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 during periods of uncertainty.

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

An Allovir Inc ALVR beneficial owner bought into the initial public offering, scooping up 2.90 million shares altogether of this clinical-stage cell therapy company at $17.00 apiece. That totaled $49.30 million. A director and two executives also purchased some shares.

A director at Axis Capital Holdings Limited AXS returned last week to add to his stake. The 742,000 shares of this insurer indirectly scooped up, at prices ranging from $40.36 to $43.00, totaled more than $30.55 million. That same director bought shares in June and July.

Xerox Holdings Corp XRX saw 10% owner Carl Icahn add to his stake. He indirectly picked up more than 1.81 million shares altogether for $16.07 to $16.60 each. That totaled almost $29.58 million. Also, a director bought 15,000 shares last week.

eHealth, Inc. EHTH Chief Executive Officer Scott Flanders picked up 50,000 shares of this private health insurance exchange services provider last week. At prices ranging from $74.00 to per share, that came to more than $3.57 million. Also, a director bought 2,000 shares at the end of July.

An executive at Iqvia Holdings Inc IQV stepped up to the buy window last week. The 10,000 shares of this life sciences technology company acquired were priced at $159.75 to $160.04 each. The total for this transaction came to nearly $1.60 million. The CEO sold some shares in July.

See also: Why Bezos Selling $3B In Amazon Shares Is Anything But Earth-Shaking

CEO Elias Sabo paid $15.99 to $16.55 each for 65,000 Compass Diversified Holdings CODI shares, and another executive bought 2,500 shares for $22.69 to $22.75 apiece. Altogether, it cost them more than $1.12 million to bulk up their stakes in this California-based private equity firm.

F5 Networks, Inc. FFIV saw a director recently add shares to his stake. At prices ranging from $136.04 to $136.89, the more than 8,000 shares cost him around $1.10 million and increased the stake in this Seattle-based cloud company to over 10,500 shares.

And Quidel Corporation QDEL saw some insiders exercising options and selling shares last week, but one director bought more than 3,500 shares of this diagnostic equipment maker. At an average of about $288.12 per share, that added up to less than $1.01 million.

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

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