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Director Trades: Domino’s Pizza CEO Don Meij stuffs his crust, Whitehaven execs bail in November
Director Trades
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- Domino’s Pizza CEO and managing director Don Meij ponies up for more than $1 million worth of shares
- Whitehaven Coal sees two of its leaders sell down millions of dollars worth of shares in November
- Wisetech Global CEO and founder Richard White continues his large selldown directly and indirectly
Director trades are often considered a good indicator of a company’s future prospects. Our fortnightly ASX Director Trades column informs you who is buying in and who is selling down. Often referred to as insider buying or selling, directors are legally permitted to buy and sell shares of the company and any subsidiaries. However, these transactions must be properly registered and divulged.
Insider buying or selling is not to be confused with insider trading, which is buying shares based on non-public information, a big no-no and illegal.
We troll through the ASX company announcements looking at director trades of interest over the past month. It’s usually the big ones that stand out or those coinciding with company news.
Directors may get shares as part of employee incentive schemes, share purchase plans, rights issues, participate in dividend reinvestment plans or purchase on-market. It’s the on-market trades we think are worth noting, where directors directly or indirectly through entities they are associated either put up cash or cash in a stake.
When a director buys shares on-market, it can signify confidence the share price will rise in the future and if multiple directors are buying, especially at larger amounts, that is even more of an indication. Of course, it’s not a sure win that the share price will rise, so it’s always worth further research on a company.
Directors will often buy company shares after a sharp price decrease. Directors may think the stock has been oversold and represents good value, sometimes they want to show confidence in their company’s prospects, other times they’ve just got another good reason to buy or sell a stock which will be divulged, like paying the good ol’ taxman.
Market overview for November
Markets built on their October gains with Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gaining 6.6% in November. Large caps outperformed mid and small caps as the S&P/ASX 50 added 7% versus 5% for the S&P/ASX MidCap 50 and 4.9% for the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries.
During the November rally, director trading remained strong with some large buys and sells.
Recent director large buys
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort
| Code | Company | Director | Direct or Indirect | Date | Volume | $ | Nature of change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DMP | Domino's Pizza Enterprises | Donald Jeffrey Meij | Indirect | Nov 3,4,7 & 8 | 17,968 | $1,001,872 | On-market |
| BVS | Bravura Solutions | Neil Broekhuizen | Indirect | Nov-04 | 636,000 | $397,675 | On-market |
| SUL | Super Retail Group | Peter Dobie Everingham | Indirect | Nov-09 | 20,000 | $201,716 | On-market |
| LSF | L1 Long Short Fund | Mark Landau | Indirect | Nov 3 & 7 | 76,000 | $184,678.90 | On-market |
| CTD | Corporate Travel Management | Marissa Peterson | Direct | Nov-02 | 10,000 | $181,000 | On-market |
| IPH | IPH Limited | Peter Warne | Direct | Nov-18 | 20,000 | $177,825 | On-market |
| EPY | Earlypay | James Beeson | Indirect | Nov-25 | 300,000 | $111,000 | On-market |
| LVE | Love Group Global | Michael Ye | Indirect | Nov-03 | 1,000,000 | $100,000 | On-market |
Domino’s CEO cuts a bigger slice
Dominoes Pizza Enterprises (ASX:DMP) CEO and managing director Don Meij has ponied up for more than $1 million worth of shares indirectly in the company.
Meij now owns 1,263,062 ordinary shares directly in the company along with 554,907 ordinary shares held by the Meij Family Trust.
DMP last week announced it had completed a $150 million fully underwritten placement of ~2.3 million new shares to institutional investors.
The placement will be used to fund full ownership of its pizza business in Germany.
“We are very pleased with the support shown by new and existing institutional investors for the Placement, which reflected shareholder feedback prior to the capital raising,” Meij said.
“We look forward to acquiring full ownership in Domino’s Pizza Germany and continuing to build the momentum across our network and delivering value to our customers, team members, franchisees and investors.”
The share price is up more than 22% in the past month but remains down more than 30% year to date.
Bravura Solutions chairman buys shares
Wealth management software platform Bravura Solutions (ASX:BVS) non-executive chairman Neil Broekhuizen snapped up ~$400k worth of shares in the company.
In his address to shareholders at BVS’s recent AGM, Broekhuizen said the global pandemic has created some unprecedented industry challenges over the last two years.
“Our global markets, particularly wealth managers in EMEA, have been strategically quiet reflecting reduced appetite for long-term investments,” he said.
“There was reduced interest in large scale software implementations in the UK, and a slowdown in development work for existing clients.
In FY22 the company delivered revenue growth of 10% to $266.7m and Group EBITDA of $45.3m which was down by 8% on FY21. Group reported NPAT was $29.9m and adjusted NPAT was $25.7m after adjusting for non-recurring items.
The BVS share price is up more than 33% year to date but remains down more than 67% YTD.
DMP & BVS share price today:
Recent large ASX sells
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort
| Code | Company | Director | Direct or Indirect | Date | Volume | $ | Nature of change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WTC | Wisetech Global | Richard White | Direct & indirect | Oct 28-Dec 1 | 570,489 | $32,279,848 | On-market |
| WHC | Whitehaven Coal | Paul Flynn | Direct & Indirect | Nov-22 | 900,000 | $7,878,511 | On-market |
| WHC | Whitehaven Coal | Mark Vaile | Indirect | Nov 22 & 23 | 200,000 | $1,770,543 | On-market |
| ALK | Alkane Resources | Ian Jeffrey Gandel | Indirect | Oct 28-Nov-2 | 2,000,000 | $1,332,600 | On-market |
| MHJ | Michael Hill International | Robert Fyfe | Direct & indirect | Nov 14 to 17 | 340,062 | $449,501 | On-market note |
| JAN | Janison Education Group | Michael Hill | Indirect | Nov 7 & 9 | 600,000 | $354,165 | On-maket note |
| NET | NetLinkz Limited | Grant Booker | Direct & indirect | Nov 4 to 10 | 5,645,603 | $143,000 | On-market |
| DTL | Data3 | Mark Esler | Indirect | Nov 4 & 7 | 15,000 | $104,166 | On-market |
Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC) advised that managing director and CEO Paul Flynn sold 900,000 ordinary shares totalling ~$7.9 million for “personal reasons, including to satisfy personal tax obligations arising from the issue of shares under the company’s equity incentive plan”.
WHC said following the sale Flynn remains one of the company’s largest individual shareholders. He holds 1,070,451 shares, 449,884 vested performance rights and 2,534,161 performance rights which are subject to meeting vesting conditions.
Meanwhile, chairman and non-executive director Mark Vaile sold 200,000 shares for ~$1.7 million indirectly. WHC advised that regional and localised flooding have hampered production at its open cut mine operations. ROM production was lower than planned across all three open cut mines primarily as a result of disruption caused by rain and flooding impacts in September.
The company said access roads and haulage roads continued to be impacted by wet weather in November with soil moisture profiles, dams and river systems at capacity in the Gunnedah Basin.
Whitehaven has not experienced on-site flooding and has maintained a level of production continuity by transporting people to sites via helicopter to overcome flood-related access issues.
However, WHC said it has still moderated its expectation for FY23 ROM coal production from its open cut mines given current and possible projected impacts of weather and ongoing labour constraints. In better news for WHC, it upgraded performance for its Narrabri mine following stronger than anticipated performance.
The WHC share price has fallen 2.21% in the past month but is up 253% year to date.
Wisetech founder continues selldown
WiseTech (ASX: WTC) founder, executive director and CEO Richard White is continuing his large sell-down in the software solutions to the logistics company he founded in 1994 and listed on the ASX in 2016.
White has been selling down stock throughout 2022 directly and indirectly, via Realwise Holdings, a company of which he owns 91.83%.
In December 2021 WTC announced it had entered into an equity swap transaction involving the sale of 4.3 million WTC shares with Realwise.
“Mr White has informed the company that the equity swap is structured to reduce market impact and that an unwind of the Equity Swap is expected to commence in early 2022 and complete within six months,” the 2021 announcement said.
“Mr White has indicated that the share sale announced today is an evolution of the trading programs he implemented in August 2020, April 2021 and September 2021, and is intended to continue to facilitate additional liquidity in WiseTech’s shares, as well as a small diversification of Mr White’s assets.”
While the exact reasons for the sell-downs have not been divulged it could still have to do with equity swap agreement. White still holds 431,469 directly and 121,042,366 indirectly according to WTC’s latest change in director’s interest announcement.
In the December 2021 announcement White confirmed his ongoing commitment to WTC.
“As the founder and CEO of WiseTech, I am committed to driving WiseTech’s global growth ambitions and positioning our CargoWise logistics execution software as the operating system for global logistics,” he said.
“As WiseTech continues to gain momentum in delivering revenue growth and market penetration, we are seeing increasing interest from new, long-term investors wanting to be part of the Company’s growth journey, which is why it is important to enhance liquidity via an orderly process.”
The WTC share price is up 0.02% in the past month and down ~3% year to date.
Janison Education Group chairman repays loan
Janison Education Group (ASX:JAN) announced that chairman Michael Hill sold 600,000 loan funded shares to repay the company a loan and “meet the associated tax liability”.
The ASX announcement said Jarumito Trust, a related entity owned by Hill, had repaid JAN the outstanding loan of $180,000.
“The resolution in the notice of Annual General Meeting for an extension of this loan repayment date for the loan funded incentive shares was withdrawn at the company’s AGM,” the announcement said.
“Mr Hill continues to hold a significant number of shares in the company and does not intend to sell any further shares now this loan has been repaid to JAN.”
The JAN share price has fallen 0.83% in the past month and more than 53% YTD.
Alkane Resources chair sells 2 million shares
Alkane Resources (ASX:ALK) non-executive chairman Ian Jeffrey Gandel sold 2 million shares indirectly for more than $1.3 million.
According to the ALK site, Gandel has extensive experience in retail management and retail property but through his private investment vehicles been an investor in the mining industry since 1994.
“Gandel is currently a substantial holder in a number of publicly listed Australian companies and, through his private investment vehicles, now holds and explores tenements in his own right in Western Australia,” the site said.
He is also non-executive chairman of Australian Strategic Materials (ASX:ASM). Gandel also sold down ~$4 million worth of stock in September.
He still holds 123, 862,313 shares indirectly in the company, which has risen more than 10% in the past month but has seen its share price fall 24% YTD.
