Well-known investment guru Peter Lynch, the former manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments, once said: “Insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.” To that end, the investment community usually perceives insider buying as a bullish signal and the management teams of publicly traded companies know that.
Earlier this week, a London-based supplier of silicon metal, silicon-based specialty alloys and ferroalloys called Ferroglobe PLC announced that several members of its senior management team, including the Executive Vice-Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, among others, made open-market purchases of shares of Ferroglobe in the past week. Such clusters of insider buying are great news for the investment community. As Dr. Inan Dogan, the founder of Insider Monkey, said in a 2015 interview: “One insider might overestimate a company’s prospects, but there is higher certainty when many insiders are buying.” With that in mind, let’s proceed to the discussion of a set of noteworthy insider transactions reported with the U.S. SEC on Thursday.
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Board Member of Leading Beauty Retailer Buys Shares
One member of Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA)’s boardroom purchased a voluminous block of shares earlier this week, the second insider purchase at the company so far in 2016. Board member Dennis K. Eck, an Interim Chief Executive Officer of the company from February 2013 to July 2013, purchased 11,000 shares on Wednesday at prices ranging from $246.92 to $247.00 per share. Following the recent purchase, Mr. Eck currently holds an ownership stake of 498,530 shares.
The largest beauty retailer in the United States and the premier beauty destination for cosmetics, fragrance, skin care products and hair care products and salon services has seen its market cap rise by 31% since the beginning of 2016. Soon after Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) released stronger-than-expected second-quarter results, analysts at Deutsche Bank reaffirmed their ‘Hold’ rating, but raised their price target on the stock to $280 from $225, citing a “terrific” quarter and higher-than-anticipated comparable store-sales of 14.4% versus consensus estimates of 12.7%. John Griffin’s Blue Ridge Capital reported owning 1.06 million shares of Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) through the latest round of 13Fs.
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The next two pages of this article discuss a series of other noteworthy insider transactions reported with the SEC on Wednesday.
