Non-executive director of building materials group Kingspan (KGP) acquired over €150,000 of shares.
On June 7, Eimear Moloney bought 2,000 Kingspan shares at a price of €75.78. This equates to a market value of €151,554.
Over the last six months shares in the group have fallen by 27%.
This in part reflects concerns surrounding the government’s warning in January that building firms were liable for up to £4 billion of additional costs to remove cladding from high-rise buildings.
The housing market is also inextricably linked to consumer confidence, which has taken a hit both from the market sell-off and the rising cost of living.
However on a more positive note the first quarter results (29 April) delivered a record performance with underlying revenues up 31% year-on-year.
This was driven by Europe being strongly ahead overall, the Americas having a positive start to the year with a very encouraging pipeline in North America and robust order intake activity recently in Latin America.
This stronger-than-expected start to the year and encouraging outlook resulted in a series of earnings upgrades from analysts.
Despite Kingspan announcing three major acquisitions year to date investment bank Berenberg estimate leverage to be at 1.2 times for the year ending 2022.
Based on their estimates, Berneberg believe the group could still spend €1.7billion on acquisitions and remain below 2.5 times net debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation.
Berenberg estimate spending the full amount could add around 20% to their earnings per share forecasts, while spending just €400m could add 5%.
KINGFISHER BOARD MEMBER SNAPS UP SHARES
Kingfisher (KGF) senior independent director Catherine Bradley bought 10,000 shares at a price of 261.7p on 7 June.
The transaction is worth £26,170, and follows the DIY store operator posting a positive trading update (23 May ) for the first quarter against strong prior-year comparatives.
Group sales of £3.25 billion for the three months to 30 April were down 5.4% on a like-for-like basis, in line with company expectations, but 16.2% above pre-pandemic levels thanks to market share gains.
The firm said demand was ‘resilient’ in both its DIY and the DIFM (do-it-for-me) and trade segments, while online sales were 164% higher than before the pandemic, accounting for 16% of group revenues.
Trading in the first two weeks of May showed an improvement on the first quarter, with like-for-like sales down just 2.5% on last year despite a negative calendar effect, and the firm reiterated its full year pre-tax profit guidance of roughly £770 million.
Given the group’s surplus cash position and its confidence in the outlook, management announced it would double the amount of its share buyback to £600 million.
The shares have fallen by 26% over the last six months.
