Insider Trading: Edward Lampert’s ESL Investments Keeps Selling $AZO

Edward Lampert’s ESL Investments keeps selling its activist stake in Autozone Inc. (AZO). This is the seventh time Edward Lampert sold AZO in the third quarter. According to the most recent Edward Lampert’s Form 4 filing and ESL Partners’ activist 13D, from October 14th to 18th Edward Lampert made 35 insider sales for 500 thousand shares in AZO at the price from $326.13 to $330.86. As of October 19th, Edward Lampert retained 11.13 million AZO shares in his position, giving a 27.8% activist stake ownership. In the last 13F filing, Edward Lampert reported 9.46 million shares in AZO, so now the firm still holds more AZO shares than it did in the second quarter.

In the second quarter, totally twenty nine hedge funds had AZO in their portfolios. Beside ESL Investments’ extremely large position, other hedge funds only had a few hundreds of thousand shares. Among them Louis Navellier had 223 thousand shares, and D. E. Shaw had 185 thousand shares.

Edward S. Lampert is chairman of Sears Holdings Corporation (SHLD) and founder, chairman and CEO of ESL Investments. He’s a couple of years shy of 50 and has an undergrad degree from Yale. Lampert is also an ex-Goldman Sachs analyst, like Farallon’s Thomas Steyer. He started Connecticut-based ESL Investments in 1988 with $28 million. According to Forbes, he is ranked 316th on the list of the world’s richest people, with an estimated net worth of $3 billion. (see the rest of the entry)

Autozone Inc. is an automotive replacement parts and accessories retailer and distributor. The company offers products for cars, SUVs, vans, and pickups, including new and remanufactured parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products. The company sells its products through Website and stores. It operated 4,476 stores in United States and 261 stores in Mexico as of May 2011. Autozone Inc. was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee.