How Many Ascension Capital Limited (NZSE:ACE) Shares Have Insiders Sold, In The Last Year?

We often see insiders buying up shares in companies that perform well over the long term. On the other hand, we'd be remiss not to mention that insider sales have been known to precede tough periods for a business. So before you buy or sell Ascension Capital Limited (NZSE:ACE), you may well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling.

Do Insider Transactions Matter?

It's quite normal to see company insiders, such as board members, trading in company stock, from time to time. However, such insiders must disclose their trading activities, and not trade on inside information.

We would never suggest that investors should base their decisions solely on what the directors of a company have been doing. But equally, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether. For example, a Columbia University study found that 'insiders are more likely to engage in open market purchases of their own company’s stock when the firm is about to reveal new agreements with customers and suppliers'.

View our latest analysis for Ascension Capital

Ascension Capital Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

In the last twelve months, the biggest single sale by an insider was when the insider, Stuart Macintosh, sold NZ$200k worth of shares at a price of NZ$0.0022 per share. We generally don't like to see insider selling, but the lower the sale price, the more it concerns us. The good news is that this large sale was at well above current price of NZ$0.001. So it is hard to draw any strong conclusion from it. The only individual insider seller over the last year was Stuart Macintosh. Notably Stuart Macintosh was also the biggest buyer, having purchased NZ$9.3k worth of shares.

Stuart Macintosh sold a total of 139.00m shares over the year at an average price of NZ$0.0023. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction!

I will like Ascension Capital better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.

Insider Ownership of Ascension Capital

I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. It appears that Ascension Capital insiders own 31% of the company, worth about NZ$599k. 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 Ascension Capital Insiders?

The fact that there have been no Ascension Capital insider transactions recently certainly doesn't bother us. We don't take much encouragement from the transactions by Ascension Capital insiders. But we do like the fact that insiders own a fair chunk of the company. So these insider transactions can help us build a thesis about the stock, but it's also worthwhile knowing the risks facing this company. When we did our research, we found 7 warning signs for Ascension Capital (6 make us uncomfortable!) that we believe deserve your full attention.

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

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, but not derivative transactions.

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