It’s been a busy week for director deals with a number of executives looking to take advantage of movements in their company’s share price.
One of the most interesting moves over the past week comes from FTSE 250 software company Kainos (KNOS), whose senior business development executive, Paul Gannon, offloaded a number of shares for a princely sum.
Gannon sold 400,000 shares in total this week across two transactions at an average price of £10.98 per share, netting a cool £4.4 million. Despite the big sale, Gannon still holds a sizeable amount of shares with around 7.5 million in total, a 6.2% stake.
KAINOS SHARES ON A ROLL
The sale comes as Kainos’ share price has been on a roll this year. A Shares Great Idea, Kainos is up over 50% since we said Buy at 718p in December.
Its reputation as a stock market darling was enhanced last week when its latest trading update blew any coronavirus cautiousness out the water and set the share price alight.
‘We expect revenue to be well ahead and adjusted profit to be substantially ahead of current consensus forecasts for the full year ending 31 March 2021,’ the company told investors.
MITIE BOSS SNAPS UP MORE SHARES
Philip Bentley, the chief executive of facilities management company Mitie (MTO), put his money where his mouth is after buying around £350,000 worth of shares at a price of 32.4p in the past week.
The purchase came after he bought £1.1 million of shares the previous week as part of Mitie’s £210 million rights issue.
The company’s shares were heavily sold off in the market collapse at the end of March, and have failed to recover, currently hovering around the 33p mark having started the year at around 74p.
But Mitie says its business has been ‘more resilient than expected’ during the pandemic, and recently brought over 40% of its 7,000 furloughed staff back to work as it sees its customers resuming operations.
In the three months to 30 June, the company also won several new contracts, particularly relating to coronavirus testing centres, as well as extending a number of client accounts.
OTHER NOTABLE DEALS
Charles Gurassa, non-executive deputy chairman of budget airline EasyJet (EZJ), recently bought around 90,000 shares in the business at 554p each, for a total of just under £500,000.
EasyJet is starting to see a slightly better recovery than first expected this summer, and now expects to fly at about 40% of capacity during the summer months up from the 30% previously anticipated. The company also forecast it would record a smaller loss this quarter than last quarter.
Lloyds Bank (LLOY) chief financial officer William Chalmers bought 1 million shares on Monday at 26.87p, worth £268,700 in total, which came after non-executive director James Lupton also bought 1 million shares at 26.2p, in a deal worth £262,000.
For a full list of the week's most significant trades, click here.
