Director Deeds: A game of holiday hide and seek

Mirroring the broader index gaining back strength over the period, there was more buying than selling among ASX company directors over the silly season. 

Directors of ASX-listed companies spent their cash on more than just Christmas presents this year. That said though, the parcel size of the major sales perhaps counteracts much of the purchasing.

So, which sectors saw the most insider activity, one way or another? Resources and IT saw their fair share of activity, although somewhat of a hum could be heard across all areas of the market over the holiday period.

Lev Mizikovsky spent $308,000 on shares in his maiden company, Tamawood. Mizikovsky, who is currently spearheading a campaign against the Collection House board, has been steadily increasing his position in the home building company. Tamawood had just issued another profit downgrade, but that wasn’t stopping Mizikovsky, with this marking his sixth purchase since the end of November. The share price has bobbed up and down since, although hasn't done much for the most part.

Salt Lake Potash’s new CEO Tony Swiericzuk spent $715,000 on shares. Swiericzuk has been in the top job at the fertiliser company since September last year.

Coppermoly, an explorer of copper and gold deposits, received two separate capital injections of nearly $131,000 and then around $8700 from Wanfu Huang, a director with more than 20 years' experience in exploration.

An explorer in Argentina, Galan Lithium, scored hundreds of thousands of dollars from two of its directors in early January. Terry Gardiner and Nathan McMahon spent up big on the same day.

Energy company Paringa Resources saw David Gay sell around $55,000 worth of shares at the start of the year.

Feeling the time was ripe, Dongfang Modern Agriculture’s Hong Cai spent around $950,000 on orange stocks to round out the year. Then, to start the year, he spent a further $132,000 on the company.

Consumer company Jayride’s Andrey Shirben spent $250,000 on shares on January 2.

Diamonds are a man’s best friend? Miles Kennedy of Lucapa Diamond Company started the new year with $39,000 worth of sparkling new stocks. 

We have an inkling more gems might appear in the logs between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve than any other time though, considering the opportunity that period presents to bury a sale or potentially pick up a 'better' buy in the holiday lull. But it isn’t always so cut and dried.

Some of the sales of summer may have come unexpected. Collins Foods and Prime Media were among those that saw big sales over this period. The boss of a star gold producer sold some of his stock over the period too.  Northern Star Resources’ Bill Beaumont sold over $9 million worth of stock in his family's Star portfolio. He had a cool 9.75 million shares before doing so, and now has around 8.75 million. He did something similar around Christmas 2017. There's a likely reason the public didn’t so much as blink on the announcement of these though, with prices continuing to rise since. Gold has widely been forecast to deliver to the upside this year, and Beaumont has been pinned down as a big reason over the years that Northern Star has remained on a tear. 

Letting the market know after Christmas, Collins Foods boss Graham Maxwell let go of $267,000 worth of stock on Christmas Eve and several days prior. He placed on-market trades on December 19, 21 and 24. At the beginning of his escapades, shares were trading at $6.30, now, they are hovering above the $6-mark.

The biggest Christmas sale took place in the Weiss household though. Gary Weiss let go of $1.33 million worth of Ariadne shares. Weiss is well-known to the investor community, being chairman of the Ardent Leisure board, a company which Ariadne has an interest in. Ariadne is a carpark operator.

Prime Media’s Ian Audsley was also relishing in the sales, of the share price kind at least, over the Christmas period. On New Years, he sold nearly $22,000 worth of stock on-market, and on Christmas Eve, he sold $42,353 in stock priced at 21.22c per share. This was days after Prime provided a positive-looking trading update, noting advertising revenue for December was slated for a double-digit increase on the December prior.

And who was buying during those quiet Christmas days? The team at Apollo Consolidated for starters, a couple of Skyfii directors, one at Starpharma, and another at Altium. We also saw triple-digit buys at small caps Consolidated Zinc and Austral Gold, and large caps Mayne Pharma and Aurora Labs. Stephen Copulos spent over $460,000 on Consolidated Zinc, a company hinged on zinc prices and the Australian dollar. It seems someone is optimistic the price of zinc will rise, as zinc stockpiles, which had been enough to meet 13 days of use over the past three years, now stand at seven days. Copulos has since spent a further $96,000 on the company in 2019, which posted better-than-expected production at its mine in Mexico.

Drug manufacturer Mayne Pharma’s Frank Condella, who is the former CEO of Juniper Pharmaceuticals, spent more than $139,000 on shares after the company had plummeted (most of its business is in the US). Condella spent his dosh on-market on December 21 and 24. Starpharma, a contraceptive supplier, attracted Jackie Fairley, Robert Thomas and Peter Turvey on December 28, who spent $76,000 between the three of them, after the stock had sunk sub-$1. Starpharma tanked around Boxing Day on an FDA rejection requesting it conduct further product trials. Meanwhile, Altium, a tech stock on a tear for the better part of 24 months, saw Lynn Mickleburgh spend over $US100,000 on shares in the printed circuit board design software provider. It may be a mouthful, but it’s tipped to become a growth market over the next decade.