Directors Trades: While most raided supermarkets for toilet paper, these directors raided the stock markets

The market carnage is certainly proving a great buying opportunity for directors, with even more last week, compared to the week before, scrambling to top up their holdings.

Stockhead found 21 directors trades over $100,000 among ASX small caps — and all but two of them were buys.

A few of these trades ran into the millions. Hugh Robertson from environmental data software maker Envirosuite (ASX:EVS) led the buyers, buying $2m worth of company shares in a placement.

Its share price has not escaped the market downturn, more than halving since November. But on Friday the company said it was on track to reach $100m in revenue and the virus did not mean its clients no longer had to meet environmental monitoring requirements.

Next up with a multimillion share buy is drug maker Mayne Pharma’s (ASX:MYX) Bruce Mathieson, who dropped $1.17m in an on-market buy.

The company has also been suffering share price wise, and admitted things could be better after reporting a half-yearly loss after tax of $17.5m.

But Mayne Pharma said it would get back on its feet by cost cutting and rationalising its portfolio.

Finally, the week’s only two sellers were Raphael Geminder of Pact Group (ASX:PGH) who parted with $4.7 million and Daniel Brady, CEO of hotelier Redcape (ASX:RDC). The latter company said it was “to meet [Brady’s] personal financial commitments”.

What goes down must come up…

Most other directors bought on market. Among the most notable was rich lister and Servcorp (ASX:SRV) founder Alfred Moufarrige, who bought another $800,000.

Child tracker Life360 (ASX:360) was having a bad run before the coronavirus spooked investors and has now lost 45 per cent since it’s May IPO. But director James Synge took a leap of faith, buying just over $100,000 on market last week.

While womens retailer City Chic Collective (ASX:CCX) has lost 42 per cent of it’s value in just two weeks it is still trading more than 19x higher than its price in December 2017. Director Michael Kay bought $240,229 worth of shares as the price dipped.

One of the few stocks on this list sitting on a gain is PR agency WPP (ASX:WPP), which has risen a modest 8 per cent. Director John Steedman bought $190,742 on market last week.

Among the biotechs, Telix Pharmaceuticals’ (ASX:TLX) Mark Nelson paid $576,000 for more shares. The company is developing drugs for various cancers and is one of the closest to commercialisation because a couple of its clinical trials are already at the phase-three stage.

Two is better than one

There were two duos of directors who tipped more money in last week. Michael Omeros and John Puttick from telco Over the Wire (ASX:OTW) bought $275,000 worth of stock between them.

The other duo comprised Kinetiko Energy (ASX:KKO) directors Adam Sierakowski and Agapitos Michael, who bought $248,000 between them.

The Africa-focused coal bed methane and gas explorer has been suspended from the ASX since late 2017 but the capital raise will help it relist.