Trading hiatus ahead of results

Directors' trades fell substantially this week against a background of the soon-to-start company results season.

The scorecard registered $1.6 million to $1.9 million in favour of directors doing some selling, compared with $2.8 million to $13 million last week.

There were few industrial counters on the buying side, with a host of resources companies making up the numbers.

One exception was Ecosave, a tightly held outfit that went public early this year and whose mission in life is to save businesses money by reducing energy consumption.

The group floated on the basis of estimated tax-paid earnings of $3 million for the year just finished.

The $1 shares gave stags a lovely little profit when they listed at $1.40 and such was the excitement they hit $1.80 in March.

But, come July, chief Marcelo Rouco announced that earnings, rather than $3 million, would weigh in at between $1.6 million and $2 million.

Those tidings had the effect of slicing the scrip from $1.61 to $1.24, but it's since bounced as high as $1.61.

Mr Rouco said that "none of the major opportunities which made up our initial public offering forecast have been lost" and there had been delays in closing sales, and resources had been allocated to a high number of contracting bids in the latter part of the 2013 financial year.

"We chose to enter those bids knowing it could draw resources away from fulfilment of existing contracts and therefore push some revenues into financial year 2014," he said, adding that the strategy had paid off with contract wins.

Three directors bought shares this week.

Elsewhere, there was multi-director buying in algae to biofuels group Algae.Tec, in mining services concern Subzero Group and Santana Minerals.