Many Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (NYSE:HPE) insiders have unloaded their shares in the past year, which could be of interest to the company’s shareholders. When assessing insider trading, it is usually more useful to know whether insiders are buying than to know whether insiders are selling. Because the latter is open to many interpretations. However, shareholders should look deeper if multiple insiders have been selling shares over a certain period of time.
Although insider trading is not the most important thing in long-term investing, we think it would be foolish to ignore it completely.
Check out our latest analysis for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
We can see that the biggest insider sale over the last year was by the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Legal Officer, John Schultz, for US$5.7m worth of shares (approximately US$21.62 per share). This means that even though the stock price was below the current price of $23.14, insiders were willing to cash out some of their shares. We usually consider it a negative when insiders sell, especially if they sell below the current price, because it means they thought a lower price was warranted. However, sellers may sell for a variety of reasons, so we don’t know exactly what they think about the stock price. It is worth noting that this sale represented only 49% of John Schultz’s holdings.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise insiders didn’t buy any shares in the company last year. The chart below depicts insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the past year. You can click on the graph below to see the exact details of each insider transaction.
I would like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise even more if there were some big insider purchases. While you wait, check out this free list of undervalued and small-cap stocks with significant insider buying recently.
Last quarter saw significant insider selling of Hewlett Packard Enterprise stock. In total, insiders sold US$18m worth of shares during this time, and the company kept no record of any purchases. This could suggest that some insiders think the share price is not cheap.
Another way to test the alignment between a company’s leaders and other shareholders is to look at the number of shares they own. We think it’s a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Hewlett Packard Enterprise insiders own around US$114m worth of shares, representing 0.4% of the company. This type of significant ownership by insiders generally increases the likelihood that the company is run in the interests of all shareholders.
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