Insider Buying Says Schlumberger (SLB), Entercom (ETM) and Hawaiian Holdings (HA) Are Undervalued

Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB)

Who Bought Shares: CEO Paul Kibsgaard and EVP Patrick Schorn

How Many Shares Were Bought: 10,000 @ $64.68 per share and 5,000 @$64.79 per share, respectively

Date of the Transaction(s): March 26

Two of Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB)’s top executives bought shares yesterday, which continue to languish around the $65 mark, 13% off where they were a year ago. After surging by more than 25% from mid-December to mid-January, Schlumberger’s shares just as quickly gave back all of those gains. While the company’s executives had expressed bullishness on the market coming into 2018, increased competition and pricing weakness in North America have put somewhat of a damper on expectations for the second-half.

International Market Returns to Growth: On the other hand, the international market figures to pick up some of the North American slack, with Patrick Schorn stating during the company’s fourth-quarter conference call that it will return to growth in 2018 for the first time in four years. However, the reactivating and repositioning of equipment in key growth areas like Russia and the Middle East was expected to weigh on Schlumberger’s first-quarter profitability. Schlumberger’s first-quarter results, which will be released on April 20, are also expected to be negatively impacted by frack sand delays that were first reported in mid-February by Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL).

Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA)

Who Bought Shares: Director Donald Carty

How Many Shares Were Bought: 5,000 @ $37.79 per share

Date of the Transaction(s): March 16

The director’s purchase on March 16 lifted his ownership to 18,675 shares of the Hawaii-centric airliner. Hawaiian Holdings shares are down by 26% over the last year and have been rather moribund for months, despite the company’s strong performance and announcement of a $100 million share repurchase program in early-December (equivalent to more than 5% of the float based on current share count and price).

Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA)’s RASM on the Rise: Hawaiian is coming off a strong February in which traffic jumped by 7.4%, outpacing even the company’s 4.9% capacity growth. That strong performance lead to a major positive revision to the company’s Q1 RASM metric. RASM (revenue per available seat mile) guidance for the first-quarter was raised earlier this month to growth of 3%-to-5%, from January guidance of between a decline of 0.5% to a gain of 2.5%.

Disclosure: None