Director Trades: Who’s making $$ buying and selling their own stock?
Director Trades
Director Trades
Here’s our weekly look at which ASX small cap directors are buying or selling their own stock (week of Sep 10):
There were nine multi-millon dollar deals in small cap land last week — six buys and three sales.
The biggest trade was Ben Gisz from TDM Asset Management with an $8.2 million splash into Pacific Smiles (ASX:PSQ) on market, buying $5.7 million shares.
The second was a sale associated with Chinese lawyer and fund manager Brett Tang worth $2.3 million in Stonewall Resources (ASX:SWJ). A convertible note had been paid back with interest in scrip, and the 251 million shares were promptly sold off for a tidy $613,912 profit on the original note value.
Mr Tang is a shareholder in Tasman Funds Management, which is Stonewall’s biggest shareholder.
(Both men are board representatives of the institutions they work for, and it was the funds behind them that actually made the trades.)
>> Scroll down for a list of the $100,000-plus ASX small cap director trades reported last week
The biggest personal deal was by former Australia Post boss Ahmed Fahour into Pro-Pac Packaging (ASX:PPG). Mr Fahour spent $2.1 million on a share placement in order to maintain his 6 per cent stake.
The placement is paying for two packaging makers that Pro-Pac is buying.
Aside from Mr Gisz’s employer’s punt on Pacific Smiles, the only other on-market trade within the million-dollar club was by Rhipe (ASX:RHP) exec Dawn Edmonds.
On-market trades are where a director buys shares directly rather than by participating in capital raisings, exercising options, or being given stock in lieu of fees or for hitting performance milestones. They are using their own money to buy in because they want to — or to sell out.
Ms Edmonds sold 1.3 million shares and made $1.5 million. She has 2.7 million left to sell.
Her colleague Michael Tierney was also selling, but he only made $826,000.
The reassured investors before the notices were published on the ASX, saying the sales were to “diversify their personal portfolios” and add liquidity to the cloud software consultant.
Credit Intelligence (ASX:CI1) CEO Jimmy Wong sold a whopping 65.8 million shares to make way for two new shareholders.
The sale of 14 per cent of his holding netted $1.4 million. He’s still the largest shareholder with 47.85 per cent of the Hong Kong debt restructuring company.
Fertoz’s (ASX:FTZ) chairman Patrick Avery is an honourable mention among the million-dollar dealers this week as he received 6 million shares, which work out to be worth $1.2 million at the closing price on Friday.
Mr Avery didn’t buy the shares because they’re performance incentives. He’s already met the hurdle for the first 2 million, so those are his, and he has to meet four more hurdles to get the rest.
The final hurdle is a share price above 60c for more than ten consecutive days. Fertoz closed at 20c on Friday.
Selling down
There were seven sellers in total among the 31 trades above $100,000 that were reported last week.
Of these, one was at pains to reassure investors that a sale wasn’t a sign the boss was moving on.
Energy-generating window maker ClearVue Tech (ASX:CPV), which rose 40 per cent last week, was worried chairman and founder Victor Rosenberg’s decision to take some profits on 250,000 shares might be misinterpreted.
“These shares are a minority of Mr Rosenberg’s total shareholding and represent 0.26 per cent of the issued capital of ClearVue.
“Mr Rosenberg sold his shares for personal asset management purposes and has advised that he has no intention to sell any further shares at this time,” the company said.
For all that he made $141,750.
Cogstate (ASX:CGS) director Bradley O’Connor reported some arbitraging last week. He exercised 250,000 options (meaning he turned them into shares, paying a fixed 49c per option to do so) and then sold 300,000.
He got 58c a share on the sale, making $51,760 in the difference.
Former Senator Kate Lundy added a little bit more to her shareholding in Electro-Optic Systems (ASX:EOS) last week.
It was by no means close to the largest trades of the week at $9985, but it was Ms Lundy’s second trade since being voted onto the board in March.
Out of the money
Victorian fruit juicer The Food Revolution Group (ASX:FOD) had a good week with a 23 per cent stock price bump after two new investments.
But chairman Bill Nikolovski had to watch 22.5 million C Class performance shares evaporate because the company didn’t hit a hurdle needed to convert them.
He lost them because the company didn’t achieved an EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) run rate over six months of $10 million or more.
Its full year EBITDA was $3.8 million.
Here’s a list of $100,000-plus ASX small cap director trades reported last week
ASX code | Company | Director | Change | Date | Volume | $ | Where | Total holdings controlled |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SKN | Skin Elements | Peter Malone | Buy | Aug 9 | 5,100,000 | 126635 | Entitlement issue | 15.2m |
AJQ | Armour Energy | Stephen Bizzell | Buy | Sept 7 | 338,877 | 338877 | Entitlement issue | 1.7m |
CI1 | Credit Intelligence | Wong Ka Sek | Sell | Sept 7 | 65,760,833 | 1444758 | Off market | 392.6m |
CZL | Consolidated Zinc | Stephen Copulos | Buy | Sept 5 | 10,000,000 | 143646 | On market | 225.4m |
JLG | Johns Lyng Group | Scott Didier | Buy | Sept 5 | 150,000 | 148929 | On market | 57.8m |
NEW | New Energy Solar | Alan Dixon | Buy | Sept 4-7 | 200,000 | 294550 | On market | 7.2m |
PPG | Pro-Pac Packaging | Ahmed Fahour | Buy | Sept 10 | 6,139,353 | 2087380 | Placement | 34.4m |
RDF | Redflex Holdings | Adam Gray | Buy | Sept 3, 4 6 | 467,098 | 195091 | On market | 38.3m |
RRL | Regis Resources | Mark Clark | Buy | Sept 7 | 750,000 | 1050000 | Exercise options | 3.9m |
SPI | Spitfire Materials | John Young | Buy | Sept 7 | 3,200,000 | 233600 | On market | 23.2m |
VRS | Veris | Brian Elton | Buy | Sept 4-7 | 801,413 | 185424 | On market | 11.9m |
MNS | Magnis Resources | Marc Vogts | Buy | Sept 10 | 300,000 | 111540 | On market | 1.2m |
TAS | Tasman Resources | Douglas Solomon | Buy | Sept 11 | 8,411,053 | 420552 | Rights issue | 92.6m |
BSP | Black Star Petroleum | Po-Tao Wei | Buy | Sept 7 | 114,132,016 | 251090 | Off market | 114m |
CGS | Cogstate | Bradley O'Connor | Buy | Sept 5-11 | 250,000 | 122500 | Exercise options | 4.5m |
CGS | Cogstate | Bradley O'Connor | Sell | Sept 5-11 | 300,000 | 174260 | On market | 4.2m |
SE1 | Sensera | Jonathan Tooth | Buy | Sept 11 | 7,280,621 | 800868 | Entitlement issue | 9.2m |
FTZ | Fertoz | Patrick Avery | Buy | Sept 10 | 6,000,000 | 0 | Shareholder approved | 6.1m |
RHP | Rhipe | Dawn Edmonds | Sell | Sept 12 | 1,300,000 | 1534000 | On market | 2.7m |
RHP | Rhipe | Michel Tierney | Sell | Sept 12 | 700,000 | 826000 | On market | 2m |
RRL | Regis Resources | Paul Thomas | Buy | Sept 12 | 168,415 | 235781 | Exercise options | 263,748 |
SEH | Sino Gas & Energy | Glen Corrie | Buy | Sept 12 | 17,917,728 | 0 | Incentive shares | 28.2m |
SWJ | Stonewall Resources | Brett Tang | Sell | Sept 5 | 251,434,703 | 2262912 | Sold shares converted from note | 327.3m |
ATL | Apollo Tourism & Leisure | Luke Trouchet | Buy | Sept 13 | 966,970 | 1437113 | Dividend reinvestment plan | 96.8m |
ATL | Apollo Tourism & Leisure | Karl Trouchet | Buy | Sept 13 | 966,970 | 1437113 | Dividend reinvestment plan | 96.8m |
CDY | Cellmid | Dennis Eck | Buy | Spet 12 | 2,631,579 | 1000000 | Placement | 5.3m |
DFM | Dongfang Modern Agriculture | Hongwei Cai | Buy | Sept 10 | 110,000 | 110600 | On market | 263.7m |
CPV | ClearVue Technologies | Victor Rosenburg | Sell | Sept 13 | 250,000 | 141750 | On market | 22.4m |
PSQ | Pacific Smiles Group | Hilton Brett | Buy | Sept 13 | 146,155 | 210463 | On market | 536,353 |
PSQ | Pacific Smiles Group | Benjamin Gisz | Buy | Sept 13 | 5,664,267 | 8213187 | On market | 30m |
NAN | Nanosonics | David Fisher | Sell | Sept 13 | 50,000 | 163259 | On market | 453,940 |