Some of the most interesting director deals of the past week have come from the world of commodities, where company bosses have used share price weakness to up their stakes.
CENTAMIN DIRECTORS SHOW FAITH
It’s been a bad week for FTSE 250 gold miner Centamin (CEY) with its shares losing around 25% of their value, falling from 200p to around the 150p mark today, since it reported an operational problem at its Sukari mine on Friday that means full year production will be lower than previously expected.
Given the strong rally in the gold price this year and the expectation that gold could continue to do well over the coming months, any issue a miner faces which dents its ability to profit from the gold rally is not going to be received well by the market.
But Centamin chairman James Rutherford and chief financial officer Ross Jerrard both seemingly have confidence in the business, and have backed that up by buying a hefty chunk of shares.
After the production guidance cut, Rutherford snapped up 100,000 shares at 152p each while Jerrard bought 15,000 shares at 148p each.
ENERGEAN CO-FOUNDER UPS STAKE
Energean (ENOG) founding partner Efstathios Topouzoglou has continued to buy more shares in the Israeli oil and gas business this week having bought around £550,000 worth of shares in a series of transactions ranging from 551p-to-574p per share.
Topouzoglou has bought shares in Energean several times this year, and his latest purchase comes after he snapped up £450,000 worth of shares in July.
The company’s share price has practically halved in the year-to-date following the collapse in demand for oil, though its shares have drifted somewhat higher since June when it announced that it had agreed to acquire Edison E&P at a revised price of $284 million, down from the original sum of $740 million, after the latter’s Norwegian assets were excluded from the takeover deal.
Despite the reduction in outlay, the deal is still expected to see a significant increase in the Energean’s reserves and production.
