Top insider trades (Mon, Dec 8)

Connor’s Commentary

• Director at Grindr (GRND) continues to buy the stock. Three purchases in the last week

• A director at CPI Card Group (PMTS) is trying to buy the dip again with a $2.7M purchase (largest ever). The stock is down 60% in the last year.

• CEO at Vestis (VSTS) buys the stock for the first-time ever ($1M purchase)

• The CEO at SmartRent (SMRT) continues buying

• Onex Corp sells $225M of Ryan Specialty Holdings (RYAN)

• COO at Thermo Fisher (TMO) sells $12M

• CEO at Grail (GRAL) makes their largest sale ever ($3.81M). The stock is up almost 400% in the last year. CFO also sold.

• EVP at Cytokinetics (CYTK) makes their largest sale ever (out of 8)

• and much more…

I go into more depth on these companies in the CEO Watcher Premium sections below.

Commentary

Another day, another CEO Watcher stock that beat earnings, opened up 10%+, and then proceeded to give back most/all of the stock pop throughout the day.

This time, we have Cooper Companies (COO), which had a double beat and strong guidance in the pre-market on Friday. The stock opened at +13% and then faded all the way back down to +6%.

It joined Shift4 (FOUR), Marvell (MRVL), and CorMedix (CRMD) as stocks we owned in the CEO Watcher portfolio that had great earnings, popped 10%+, and then gave back most/all of the pop on the same day (note: we got out of CRMD and FOUR pretty quickly after earnings were announced because they were strictly earnings plays).

While the price action post-earnings was very annoying this quarter, I’m pretty pleased with the hit rate of stocks with high signal insider buying that were followed by strong earnings.

Cooper Companies (COO) was added back in September when we found five insiders buying $1.22M of the stock when it was around $68.

When we zoom out, we see that this was the first insider buying in at least two years, and a reversal, as insiders had been selling the stock at highs.

The five insiders who bought the stock were the CEO, CFO, COO, President of CooperVision, and a Director. The CFO, COO, and President of CooperVision had never bought the stock before, while the CEO and Director had a solid track record with average 1y returns of 52% and 34% on previous purchases.

Obviously, looking at the chart, this was a group insider dip buy (our favorite setup), plus it was trading at a low EV/EBITDA (still is) and had doubled its buyback.

Here are the quick notes I shared back then.

keep scrolling. top trades + all of the charts and data below

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