We recently published a list of 12 Stocks with Heavy Insider Buying in 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Tidewater Inc. (NYSE:TDW) stands against other stocks with heavy insider buying in 2025.
Insider trading is often seen as an important indicator of management’s confidence in their company’s future. For decades, top investors and analysts have endorsed this idea, arguing that insiders purchase shares of their own companies for one primary reason – if they firmly believe the stock price will increase significantly and grow the value of their investment. This idea stems from the fact that insiders, such as high ranked executives and directors, possess confidential information and data that helps them draw insights into the company’s outlook and growth trajectory well before outside investors are able to. As a result, empirical research on the topic tends to agree that insider buying coincides with troughs in stock prices, and vice versa, insider selling coincides with peak valuations.
READ ALSO: 12 Penny Stocks with Insider Buying in 2025
The US stock market has experienced two years of explosive growth, following the 2022 bear market fueled by rising inflation and interest rates. For most of 2023, the stock market appreciation was primarily driven by a small subset of companies fueled by AI-related tailwinds, which led to rising concentration levels, all while on an equal-weighted basis, the performance was staying flat. The following year brought a broader acceleration in growth, with many other sectors catching up and driving a new all-time high into early 2025. We can now firmly say that the bear market of 2023-2024 has been broad, leading to apparently expensive valuations across the entire market. It is certainly not easy to be an investor in the US market right now, as peak valuations make most of the companies appear expensive, all while new threats and risks loom from all directions.
The new US administration has brought a major change in trajectory, something which hasn’t been seen in decades. Many of their new policies are a short-term (at least) threat to several industries and sectors, ranging from Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements and ending with Government consulting, engineering, and technology contractors. A more recent development, which arises as a result of the new Government policies, is a potential slowdown in commercial and residential construction – the freshly imposed tariffs are a major headwind for builders, as they make building materials significantly more expensive, all while the heightened scrutiny on immigration can potentially cause labor shortages in this field, which again makes building more expensive. The key takeaway is that plenty of new risks arise every day, which, coupled with still near peak valuations, makes it difficult for investors to decide which stocks to invest in.
With that being said, we believe insider buying could provide unique insights into what more informed investors (management itself) believe will happen with the stock price of their company. Sudden developments often bring overreactions from investors, which create opportunities for more informed investors to act. In this context, closely watching insider buying could provide a strong signal that the market overreacted to some negative developments. Also, we believe that the larger the amount of stock an insider is buying, the stronger the insider’s conviction in the future of the company. That’s why we decided to particularly track companies that have shown heavy insider buying in the last couple of months.
Our Methodology
We used Insider Monkey’s insider trading stock screener to find companies with at least two insiders buying shares worth at least $500,000 in the last six months. We believe that multiple insiders buying significant amounts of stock represents a higher chance that insiders have high confidence in the company. For all the companies we also include the number of hedge funds that own the stock, according to Insider Monkey’s database of Q4 2024. The stocks are ranked according to hedge funds having stakes in them.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A fleet of offshore supply vessels and tugs carrying materials to an oilrig in the distance.
Tidewater Inc. (NYSE:TDW)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 33
Tidewater Inc. (NYSE:TDW) is a leading provider of offshore support vessels and marine services to the global energy industry. The company operates a fleet of over 215 vessels, including anchor handling towing supply vessels, platform supply vessels, crew boats, utility vessels, and offshore tugs. These vessels support various offshore activities such as transporting supplies and personnel, towing and anchor handling for mobile rigs, offshore construction, and seismic operations. TDW serves a diverse clientele, including oil and gas exploration, field development, and production companies, as well as windfarm development and maintenance operations, in regions like the Americas, Asia Pacific, EMEA.
Tidewater Inc. (NYSE:TDW) demonstrated significant financial improvements in 2024, with revenue growing 33% year-over-year, average day rates increasing by nearly $4,500 per day, and net income nearly doubling. The company generated $331 million in free cash flow during 2024 and reduced net debt by $149 million while also reducing share count by 1.7 million shares. Looking ahead to 2025, the company expects revenue between $1.32 billion to $1.38 billion with gross margins of 48% to 50%, though they anticipate a slower first half of the year with material uplift expected in the third and fourth quarters. While offshore drilling activity appears more muted throughout 2025 compared to 2024, management remains confident in the long-term fundamentals, particularly due to strong subsea demand and growing FPSO activity with 15 FPSOs expected to be installed during 2025.
Tidewater Inc. (NYSE:TDW) maintains a disciplined approach to capital allocation, actively pursuing share repurchases with a new $90.3 million authorization, while remaining opportunistic about potential fleet acquisitions and establishing a long-term capital structure. Management expressed confidence that vessel supply will be unable to keep pace with demand, noting that newbuild PSVs represent only about 3% of existing PSV supply, and natural vessel attrition is expected to offset additions to the global fleet. The positive sentiment from management is reinforced by heavy insider buying of the company stock in the last six months.
Overall, TDW ranks 4th on our list of stocks with heavy insider buying in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of TDW as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than TDW but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
