The Past Week's Notable Insider Buys: More Biotech IPOs, Bumble, Fiserv And More

Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors, especially when markets face uncertainty.
Biotech stocks and secondary and initial public offerings were well represented this week.
A couple of chief executive officers also stepped up to the buy window 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 when there is uncertainty in the markets or the markets are at near all-time highs.

Here are some of the most noteworthy insider purchases that were reported in the past week.

Talis Biomedical Corp TLIS saw its chief financial officer acquire almost 1,700 shares in its initial public offering, while other insiders bought more than 6.63 million shares altogether. At an offering price of $16.00 per share, the total for all these purchases came to over $106.22 million.

Decibel Therapeutics Inc DBTX had a 10% owner and two directors buy shares of in its IPO. The more than 2.39 million shares acquired, at $18.00 apiece, totaled nearly $43.05 million. The stock has traded as high as $24.39 so far, but it closed most recently at $19.05 per share.

CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd acquired more than 488,300 Bumble Inc BMBL shares at the IPO price of $43.00, while another director afterward bought over 6,500 shares at an average share price of $76.23. Altogether, those transactions added up to almost $21.50 million.

A 10% owner picked up more than 1.18 million shares of Molecular Templates Inc MTEM last week. That cost that owner approximately $15.00 million, at the per-share price of $12.65. That same beneficial owner also purchased 80,000 of the shares at the beginning of this month.

Following a better than expected earnings report, a beneficial owner bought around 288,000 Prothena Corporation PLC PRTA shares for $22.77 to $23.47 apiece. The total for that was more than $6.69 million. Note that an officer sold 7,540 shares last week as well.

Anterix Inc ATEX saw a 10% owner add to its stake at a time when other insiders were selling the shares. The almost 151,100 shares that owner acquired, at prices ranging from $41.85 to $43.41 apiece, totaled more than $6.48 million. The stock was last seen trading at $43.92 a share.

An Oncorus Inc ONCR director indirectly scooped up 300,000 of its shares last week. At a secondary offering price of $19.00, that cost him $5.70 million, and it raised the stake to more than 1.40 million shares. Unfortunately for that director, the stock ended the week trading at $17.55 per share.

Corvus Pharmaceuticals Inc CRVS CEO Richard Miller and another director took advantage of a secondary offering. For $3.50 apiece, the almost 1.39 million shares acquired cost them about $4.85 million. Note that the other director also bought $30 million in Decibel Therapeutics shares (see above) at about the same time.

Neximmune Inc NEXI had its chief operating officer and three other insiders step up to the buy window during the week. The almost 241,800 shares they acquired altogether, at an IPO price of $17.00 per share, added up to around $3.81 million. The stock ended the week trading at $23.00 a share.

And Fiserv Inc FISV saw a director acquire 9,100 of its shares early in the week. At an average share price of $110.99, that cost the director about $1.10 million. This fintech company's stock ended Friday's trading at $111.36 per share, but it is still down over 2% since the beginning of the year.

Note that some smaller amount of insider buying at Black Knight Inc BKI, BridgeBio Pharma Inc BBIO, CVS Health Corp CVS, Northwest Bancshares, Inc. NWBI, Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. NUS, SLM Corp SLM and United States Steel Corporation X was reported in the past week as well.