Originally posted by SimonGr
Do you really think so? A purchase of just 0.1M shares??? Have you checked his Director buy/sell activity over the last 5 years????
He’s sold >6M shares in past 5 years (selling 2.6M shares as low as $4) ... this is his first purchase in 5 years (maybe longer - I didn’t check back further). He last sold 1.165M shares at $23 and yet has only so far bought back 0.1M at a cheaper price? So me think this isn’t nearly enough for him to be showing confidence in CTD ... it’s more like a small purchase to try to protect his remaining holding.
If he buys 2M shares at current prices ... I’ll sit up and take notice. But for me, this doesn’t say anything except that he’s wanting retail shareholders to think he’s supporting the company. Don’t be fooled.
The CEO went from a millionare, to having over ten million, to over a hundred million in net worth off the back of stock appreciation in this company. The vast majority of his wealth is based in company stock. There isn't a CEO on the planet that is going to go from a few million to over a hundred in ten years and not sell a significant amount along the way for diversification purposes, and to enjoy life; selling along the way to buy a nice house, car, spending on their kids, holidays etc etc.
CEO's aren't robots, virtually no senior management even in a company with massive growth like this holds stocks until they're 65 just because they think it will drastically appreciate. No one makes it their goal in life to hoard as much money in investment as possible, never spend any along the way and then die with a giant pile of it, or everyone with a decent salary that invested in this manner would be rich. I agree that this notice is a minimal buy in terms of his overall net worth, holdings, and previous sales, but your arguments about the sells being meaningful is laughably stupid, and I suspect you're aware of that.
Again I agree that the buy should be taken with a grain of salt because there are certainly ample examples I can think of where management didn't have a clue and averaged down big time while it plummeted (SGH), but making silly points about the sells like this don't make you come across as neutral, but maybe you just didn't put any thought into it. I also somewhat agree that the business was overhyped by management and particularly at $33 overpriced by any metric, but at this point its questionable, and 95% of the basis for which VGI suggested it was overpriced appears to be baseless. The current share price reflects fear and a change in sentiment, not a change in view of the fundamentals. For those saying it should still halve again and be on a lower P/E metric than a bank stock, judging on the historical successes, potential for organic and acquisitive expansion in the state of the corporate travel market, and the very healthy state of the balance sheet, that is in the simplest terms, just plain stupid.
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