Two Insiders Bought Web.com

Two members of Web.com Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:WWWW)’s Board of Directors, Deborah Quazzo and Philip Facchina, reported buying shares of the stock on December 13^th at prices of about $14 per share. Quazzo purchased 7,100 shares- giving her a total of nearly 40,000 shares- while Facchina’s direct holdings now sit at just over 52,000 shares after buying 10,000 shares on the same day. See a history of insider purchases at Web.com. Studies show that insider purchases are bullish signs (read more about studies on insider trading), and when insider trading filings show consensus insider buying it is particularly bullish on average. Web.com provides domain services for small businesses in the Americas and in Britain.

Deloitte recently named Web.com Group, Inc. one of the fastest growing technology companies in North America, and that’s quite apparent when looking at the company’s most recent 10-Q: revenue in the third quarter of 2012 came in at $106 million, easily more than double the $44 million in sales from a year ago. In the first nine months of the year revenue had been up 136%. However, costs have also been up and as a result Web.com reported a slightly larger operating loss last quarter than in the third quarter of 2011. With interest expenses also being high, losses per share were 45 cents (as opposed to 19 cents in the same period in the previous year). Cash flow from operations has also grown, enough so that Web.com Group, Inc. has been paying down at least some of its substantial debt.

While the company is unprofitable for 2012, the market capitalization of $700 million (with plenty of daily dollar volume for most investors) places its valuation at 8 times forward earnings estimates. The sell-side’s optimism doesn’t end there; in their eyes, earnings growth will continue over the next several years and so the five-year PEG ratio is 0.6. Columbus Circle Investors, managed by Donald Chiboucis, initiated a position of about 840,000 shares last quarter (check out more of Chiboucis’ stock picks). However, a number of market players seem very bearish on the stock as the most recent data shows that 31% of the outstanding shares are held short.