- CentralNic non-executive buys after upgrades
- Domino’s director adds to his stake
- Jet2 mogul jettisons £38m of shares
As we approach the year-end, we thought it might be instructive to see which directors have been most active in buying - and selling - their companies’ shares.
Using the Director Deals function on the Shares website, we ranked the most active directors over the last three and 12 months, with some surprising results.
PLENTY OF INSIDER BUYING
Way out in front in terms of deals over the last three months is Matthew Royde, non-executive director of internet marketing firm CentralNic (CNIC:AIM), with no fewer than 20 separate purchases totaling over 3.45 million shares worth more than £5 million at today’s price.
CentralNic has delivered a series of profit upgrades this year, the latest in mid-October when the firm said it would ‘materially’ beat market expectations thanks to a traditionally strong fourth quarter.
Also active over the last three months been Usman Nabi, non-executive director of fast-food firm Domino’s Pizza (DOM), with 11 purchases this month alone for 900,000 shares worth over £2.7 million, along with Next (NXT) chairman Michael Roney who bought 563 shares in 11 deals for a more modest £27,000.
Since the start of the year, Wood Group (WG.) finance director David Kemp has either bought or transferred in almost 66,000 shares in the company worth more than £86,000 in no fewer than 37 transactions, while on a single day in August non-executive director Vijay Talwar scooped up just under 10,000 shares in Dunelm (DNLM) worth over £900,000 at current prices.
BIG HITTERS SELLING THEIR SHARES
It certainly hasn’t been all one-way traffic this year, however, with several senior directors selling large chunks of stock.
Over the last month, Jet2 (JET2) executive chairman Philip Meeson has offloaded 4.5 million shares in the low-cost airline for a total consideration of more than £38 million.
In an announcement to the stock exchange, the firm said Meeson didn’t plan to sell any of his remaining 39.3 million shares or 18% stake ‘in the immediate future’.
The Jet2 boss hit the headlines over the summer for criticizing airports for their ‘inexcusable’ failure to resume normal service following the pandemic, resulting in flights being cancelled and ‘atrocious’ customer service.
Also in the last month, chairman Andrew Page has disposed of 5.3 million shares of Alfa Financial Software (ALFA) for more than £8.4 million while chairman William Currie has sold 1.08 million shares in Eagle Eye Solutions (EYE:AIM) for almost £6 million.
