Trade Alert: Executive VP & Chief Information Officer Of KeyCorp Amy Brady Has Sold Stock

Some KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY) shareholders may be a little concerned to see that the Executive VP & Chief Information Officer, Amy Brady, recently sold a substantial US$881k worth of stock at a price of US$17.61 per share. Probably the most concerning element of the whole transaction is that the disposal amounted to 61% of their entire holding.

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The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At KeyCorp

Notably, that recent sale by Amy Brady is the biggest insider sale of KeyCorp shares that we've seen in the last year. That means that even when the share price was below the current price of US$18.22, 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. This single sale was 61% of Amy Brady's stake.

Happily, we note that in the last year insiders paid US$152k for 11.03k shares. On the other hand they divested 134.37k shares, for US$2.3m. All up, insiders sold more shares in KeyCorp 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. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

See our latest analysis for KeyCorp

I will like KeyCorp better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of undervalued and small cap stocks with considerable, recent, insider buying.

Insider Ownership

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. Insiders own 0.4% of KeyCorp shares, worth about US$74m. 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 Do The KeyCorp Insider Transactions Indicate?

Insiders haven't bought KeyCorp stock in the last three months, but there was some selling. Zooming out, the longer term picture doesn't give us much comfort. Insider ownership isn't particularly high, so this analysis makes us cautious about the company. So we'd only buy after careful consideration. So these insider transactions can help us build a thesis about the stock, but it's also worthwhile knowing the risks facing this company. While conducting our analysis, we found that KeyCorp has 4 warning signs and it would be unwise to ignore them.

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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.