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We’ve lost count of how many times insiders have accumulated shares in a company that goes on to improve markedly. On the other hand, we’d be remiss not to mention that insider sales have been known to precede tough periods for a business. So before you buy or sell RPC, Inc. (NYSE:RES), you may well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling.
Do Insider Transactions Matter?
It’s quite normal to see company insiders, such as board members, trading in company stock, from time to time. However, most countries require that the company discloses such transactions to the market.
We don’t think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions. But it is perfectly logical to keep tabs on what insiders are doing. As Peter Lynch said, ‘insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.’
View our latest analysis for RPC
RPC Insider Transactions Over The Last Year
In the last twelve months, the biggest single sale by an insider was when VP, CFO Ben Palmer sold US$270k worth of shares at a price of US$20.03 per share. While the sale doesn’t make us feel confident, we do note it was conducted at a price well above the current share price, which is US$9.93. So it is hard to draw any strong conclusion from it. The only individual insider seller over the last year was Ben Palmer.
Ben Palmer ditched 17.00k shares over the year. The average price per share was US$19.88. You can see the insider transactions over the last year depicted in the chart below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction!
I will like RPC better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.
Insider Ownership of RPC
Another way to test the alignment between the leaders of a company and other shareholders is to look at how many shares they own. Usually, the higher the insider ownership, the more likely it is that insiders will be incentivised to build the company for the long term. RPC insiders own about US$138m worth of shares (which is 6.5% of the company). Most shareholders would be happy to see this sort of insider ownership, since it suggests that management incentives are well aligned with other shareholders.
So What Do The RPC Insider Transactions Indicate?
It doesn’t really mean much that no insider has traded RPC shares in the last quarter. It’s great to see high levels of insider ownership, but looking back at the last year, we don’t gain confidence from the RPC insiders selling. Therefore, you should should definitely take a look at this FREE report showing analyst forecasts for RPC.