In our weekly series, James Norris looks at directors buying and selling shares in their own company over the last week.
- Novacyt CEO buys £100k shares
- CEO of Braveheart buys at 52 week lows
- Ibstock CEO buys on revenue jump
- Non-exec chair of Oriole Resources acquires 2.7m shares
- Watches of Switzerland Group non-exec buys 9k shares
- Baltic Classifieds Group chairman acquires 357k shares
Novacyt (AIM: NCYT), an international specialist in clinical diagnostics, has announced that recently appointed CEO David Allmond on 25 March bought 43,500 ordinary shares at £2.31, for £100,485. Shares in the company had been sliding for most of the year, but have picked up over the past three weeks, on the back of a general rally of the UK stock market from 7 March. Investors might worry that, as a lot of Novacyt’s revenues have come from its Covid testing kits, the outlook might be uncertain, but clearly Allmond disagrees. Novacyt shares opened trading today at 228.40p, up more than 68% since 7 March, but with a performance of -38.31% YTD and -66.32% over 12 months.
Braveheart (LON: BRH) CEO Trevor Brown on 26 March bought 285,000 ordinary shares at a price of 16.575p per share, for £47,239. Brown has taken advantage of the company share price being close to its 52-week low of 11.0p to make two other acquisitions in March, paying a total of £115,499 for an aggregate 875,000 shares in the month. He now holds a total beneficial interest in 4,751,013 ordinary shares, equivalent to 9.09% of the company’s voting rights. From their 52-week low on 7 March, they have gained 55%, though the 1-year performance is still -77.91%, and yesterday were trading at 18.25p.
Ibstock (LON: IBST) CEO Joe Hudson on 25 March bought 11,301 shares at 176.97p each, for almost £20,000. Ibstock, a UK brick manufacturer, saw its revenue jump 23% to reach pre-pandemic levels, on the back of a booming demand for housing. The company booked a pre-tax profit of £65m, up from a £24m loss in 2020, though 2019 pre-tax profits stood at £82m. . Shares opened trading today at 180.10p, a performance of -11.63% YTD and -17.91% over 12 months.
Oriole Resources (AIM: ORR) non-executive chair Eileen Carr on 25 March acquired 2,699,969 ordinary shares, at an average of 0.296p per share, worth almost £800,000. Oriole Resources is an AIM-listed exploration company that operates in West Africa. It is focused on early-stage exploration in Cameroon (Bibemi, Wapouzé and Central Licence Package projects) and the more advanced Senala gold project in Senegal, where Iamgold, a Canadian mid-tier gold mining company operating in North America, South America and West Africa, has the option to spend $8m to earn a 70% interest. Oriole shares opened trading at 0.30p, giving a return of -14.80% YTD and -67.12% over 12 months.
Watches of Switzerland Group (LON: WOSG) non-executive director Tea Colaianni has bought 8,818 ordinary shares at 1,121p each, for a total of £98,916. Shares are worth 1,144p, a performance of 19.44% YTD but, unusually for the London Stock Exchange in this first quarter, a positive performance of almost 73% over 12 months.
Baltic Classifieds Group (LON: BCG) chairman Trevor Mather has bought 357,150 ordinary shares in the company at 136.4p, for a total of £487,152. BCG, a Lithuania-based operator of online classified advert portals, which is valued at more than £1bn, has reported strong growth in traffic and revenues, which can be expected to continue as the Baltic region’s economy continues its post-pandemic recovery. Shares in BCG, which listed in June last year, opened trading today at 139.50p, giving a performance of -44.86% YTD.
