Insider Buying Metrics Pointing to Three Battered Companies Poised to Rebound

Provider of Rugged Mobile PCs Has CFO Buy Some Shares

Xplore Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:XPLR) had one member of its executive team pile up some shares earlier this week. Chief Financial Officer Thomas Wiley Wilkinson snatched up two blocks of 5,000 shares each on Tuesday, which are held indirectly by SEP FBO Thomas Wilkinson. These 10,000 shares were purchased at a weighted average cost of $2.44 per share. After the recent purchase, Mr. Wilkinson holds an indirect ownership stake of 20,000 shares.

The Austin-based maker of impact-resistant tablet computers has lost 52% of its market value since the beginning of 2016. Xplore Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:XPLR)’s stock performance was recently weighted by its lower-than-anticipated fiscal 2016 financial results. The company, currently the Nr.2 provider of rugged tablets worldwide, reported record revenue of $100.5 million for fiscal 2016 that ended March 31, up from a mere $42.6 million reported for fiscal 2015. Xplore recorded a net loss of $362,000 on operating income of $1.05 million, compared to net income of $249,000 on operating income of $327,000 posted a year ago. The massive drop in the company’s bottom line reflects integration and acquisitions costs associated with the acquisition of certain assets of Motion Computing Inc. in April 2015.

It remains to see whether Xplore Technologies will succeed in defending its market share by building marketplace awareness of its products in the face of strong competition from Panasonic, the largest provider of mobile rugged computers, and other players in the industry. There were a mere four hedge fund vehicles from our system invested in the company at the end of March, which accumulated 5% of its total number of shares. Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies LLC owns 33,500 shares of Xplore Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:XPLR) as of March 31.

Struggling Provider of Cloud-Related Solutions Registers Notable Insider Buying

InterCloud Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:ICLD) has seen two insiders purchase sizable blocks of shares in the past several trading sessions. To start with, Chairman and CEO Mark E. Munro snapped up 62,500 shares last Thursday for $0.80 each and 72,463 shares on Friday at $0.69 apiece. After the recent purchases, Mr. Munro currently owns 1.62 million shares. Board member Mark F. Durfee also purchased 62,500 shares on Thursday and 72,463 shares on Friday, lifting his ownership to 632,428 shares.

The provider of cloud networking orchestration and automation solutions and services has seen the value of its shares plunge by 35% since the start of 2016. As stated in the company’s latest SEC filings, InterCloud Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:ICLD)’s management has doubts about the company’s ability to continue operating given that its available cash balance will not be enough to fund the anticipated level of operations for the next year. At the end of June, InterCloud Systems announced it had received more than $4.0 million in purchase orders since the start of 2016 for software defined networking and virtual network function validation services for a global networking company, which Mr. Munro called “one of the most significant announcements InterCloud has ever released”. Hence, the recent insider buying appears to suggest that InterCloud may perform better in the upcoming months. There were no hedge funds tracked by our team with equity investments in InterCloud Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:ICLD) at the end of March.

Disclosure: None