Directors’ Trades: Bevan Slattery chips more cash into Superloop

The past fortnight’s most notable director’s trade above $100,000 came from prominent tech entrepreneur Bevan Slattery.

Slattery is well known in ASX tech circles. He co-founded data centre operator NextDC (ASX:NXT), cloud communications provider Megaport (ASX:MP1) and NBN provider Superloop (ASX:SLC).

In recent months he has invested in other tech stocks including HR tech company intelliHR (ASX:IHR) and geospatial analytics company Pointerra (ASX:3DP).

But last week he chipped another $274,463 into Superloop. While this company has not yet had the share price success of Next DC and Megaport, it had some highlights in the last financial year.

These include achieving its earnings guidance of $13.5 million and 64 per cent growth in home broadband subscriptions.

eCommerce trades

Speaking of long-term executives chipping in, Beacon Lighting (ASX:BLX) chairman Ian Robinson and his son Glen spent $1.48 million in a Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRP).

A DRP is a mechanism allowing shareholders to buy more shares with their dividends rather than just taking a cash payment.

Beacon has been one of the ASX’s ecommerce winners in 2020, being one of the stocks able to help locked down consumers with home projects.

Another ecommerce winner during COVID-19 has been Redbubble (ASX:RBL), which is an online market place targeting independent artists. Its CEO Martin Hosking parted with over $30 million in shares last week.

The company told shareholders the main reason was “to provide philanthropic support for the Melbourne tertiary education education sector”, although he would also be paying a tax bill.

Resources buyers

Last week Gascoyne Resources (ASX:GCY) finally completed a deal that let it escape bankruptcy and revive its struggling gold operations at Dalgarange. Richard Hay bought $100,000 of shares in a placement as part of the deal.

MinRex Resources (ASX:MRR) directors James Bahen and Glenn Whiddon bought $150,000 each also in a placement.

Their company surged last week after it sealed a joint venture deal with fellow explorer Australia United Mining (ASX:AYM) over a project in New South Wales’ Lachlan Fold Belt of NSW.

The Lachlan Ford Belt hosts several gold producing mines including Newcrest Mining’s (ASX:NCM) Cadia mine and dozens more projects at an exploration phase owned by small cap stocks such as Alkane Resources’ (ASX:ALK) Boda discovery.

Austar Gold’s (ASX:AUL) Paul McNally bought $176,643 in the Victorian brownfields explorer’s rights issue.

The biggest buyer of all came from Gavin Caudle of Sihayo Gold (ASX:SIH) who bought over $5.6 million in a rights issue.

His company is named after its flagship Indonesian gold project. Sihayo has just begun another exploration campaign set to take up the rest of the year.