Former CEO of Media-Ratings Firm Offloads Shares, Board Member at Low-Priced Drilling Contractor Buys Huge Block of Shares, and Other Transactions

Former CEO of Media-Ratings Firm Offloads Huge Amount of Shares

The former head of Nielsen N.V. (NYSE:NLSN) offloaded a great deal of shares in the past several days. Board member David L. Calhoun, former Chief Executive Officer of Nielsen and Executive Chairman of the Board from January 2014 to December 2015, sold 111,425 shares on Friday and 18,575 shares on Monday at prices between $44.64 and $45.32 per share, cutting his direct ownership stake to 506,921 shares. Mr. Calhoun also discarded a 100,000-share block on Monday, held by various trusts for the benefit of his family members.

The global performance management company has seen its market capitalization drop by 12% in the past 12 months. Nielsen N.V. (NYSE:NLSN) recently reported revenues of $6.31 billion for the full-year of 2016, up from $6.17 billion generated during 2015. Revenues increased 4.1% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. More importantly, the media-ratings firm anticipates 2017 constant currency revenue growth in the range of 5%-to-6%. As companies require an increasing amount of data and analytics to formulate strategies and direct operations, the market for business information and insights is likely to keep expanding going forward. There were 27 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey with long positions in Nielsen at year-end, as compared to 26 recorded at the end of the September quarter. LMR Partners, founded by Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold, sold out its entire stake of around 64,000 shares in Nielsen N.V. (NYSE:NLSN) during the fourth quarter.

Executive at Energy Delivery Company Discards Shares

One member of Eversource Energy (NYSE:ES)’s management team also unloaded a sizeable block of shares earlier this week. Leon “Lee” Olivier, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Energy Strategy and Business Development, liquidated 35,000 shares on Monday at prices varying from $58.68 to $59.07 per share. Mr. Olivier currently owns a total of 117,757 shares after this sale.

The shares of the energy delivery company are up 6% since the start of the year. In mid-October, Argus analysts warned that “utilities as a group are heavily debt-financed and aggregate interest charges are likely to rise in the event of a rate hike,” implying that the rising interest-rate environment is likely to put downward pressure on Eversource Energy (NYSE:ES)’s shares. According to Argus analysts, “equity investors seeking income often move away from utility shares and turn to the bond market” in a rising interest rate environment. Just recently, Eversource Energy agreed to team up with DONG Energy, a leader in offshore wind power, to jointly develop the Bay State Wind project, a proposed offshore wind farm to be located roughly 15-25 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

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