An Insider Bought 30,000 Shares of Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX)

According to a Form 4 filed with the SEC, Ernest Mario, who is a member of the Board of Directors at Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) directly acquired 30,000 shares of the company’s stock on May 6^th at an average price of $7.76 per share. This gives him about 510,000 shares held directly. We track insider purchases because economic theory suggests that insiders should generally avoid buying stock, instead preferring to diversify their wealth, unless their expected return on the stock is high enough to offset the benefits of diversification. Studies show that stocks bought by insiders exhibit a small outperformance effect (read our analysis of studies on insider trading).

Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) is a medical device company perhaps best known for its cardiac health devices. After a 37% rise in the stock price year to date, the stock has a market capitalization of $11 billion. In the first quarter of 2013, Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) experienced a 6% decline in revenue versus a year earlier. If we add back a number of special items from both the quarter and Q1 2012 (for example, the company took a goodwill impairment of over $400 million last quarter) we get that management was able to hold net operating margins in line.

These special items have left Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) unprofitable on a trailing basis, but adjusted earnings numbers haven’t been too terrible; Wall Street analysts are expecting essentially no change for 2013, resulting in a current-year P/E multiple of 20. That’s certainly not value territory, but the sell-side does then expect some gains in EPS beyond that point. We’d be a bit skeptical, however, given that top line numbers have been down.

We follow quarterly 13F filings from hedge funds and other notable investors as part of our work developing investment strategies (we have found, for example, that the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds generate an average excess return of 18 percentage points per year) and can also use our database to find investment managers who had large positions in Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) at the beginning of this year. Billionaire Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors disclosed ownership of about 15 million shares at the end of December (find Cooperman’s favorite stocks). Diamond Hill Capital, managed by Ric Dillon, sold 1% of its shares but still had almost 18 million shares in its portfolio according to its 13F (see more stocks Diamond Hill owns).