Stuart Brightman Spends US$78k On Hunting Stock

Potential Hunting PLC (LON:HTG) shareholders may wish to note that the Independent Chairman of the Board, Stuart Brightman, recently bought UK£78k worth of stock, paying UK£3.88 for each share. However, it only increased shareholding by a small percentage, and it wasn't a huge purchase by absolute value, either.

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The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At Hunting

The CEO & Director, Arthur Johnson, made the biggest insider sale in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for UK£1.4m worth of shares at a price of UK£2.95 each. That means that even when the share price was below the current price of UK£3.72, an insider wanted to cash in some shares. We generally consider it a negative if insiders have been selling, especially if they did so below the current price, because it implies that they considered a lower price to be reasonable. Please do note, however, that sellers may have a variety of reasons for selling, so we don't know for sure what they think of the stock price. We note that the biggest single sale was only 24% of Arthur Johnson's holding.

In the last twelve months insiders purchased 64.23k shares for UK£228k. But they sold 653.05k shares for UK£1.9m. All up, insiders sold more shares in Hunting than they bought, over the last year. You can see the insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction!

View our latest analysis for Hunting

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Does Hunting Boast High Insider Ownership?

For a common shareholder, it is worth checking how many shares are held by company insiders. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. It appears that Hunting insiders own 7.2% of the company, worth about UK£40m. We've certainly seen higher levels of insider ownership elsewhere, but these holdings are enough to suggest alignment between insiders and the other shareholders.

So What Does This Data Suggest About Hunting Insiders?

It is good to see recent purchasing. However, the longer term transactions are not so encouraging. The more recent transactions are a positive, but Hunting insiders haven't shown the sustained enthusiasm that we look for, although they do own a decent number of shares, overall. So they seem pretty well aligned, overall. So these insider transactions can help us build a thesis about the stock, but it's also worthwhile knowing the risks facing this company. You'd be interested to know, that we found 1 warning sign for Hunting and we suggest you have a look.

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For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions of direct interests only, but not derivative transactions or indirect interests.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.