Who Has Been Selling ACI Worldwide, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACIW) Shares?
It is not uncommon to see companies perform well in the years after insiders buy shares. On the other hand, we’d be remiss not to mention that insider sales have been known to precede tough periods for a business. So before you buy or sell ACI Worldwide, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACIW), you may well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling.
What Is Insider Selling?
It’s quite normal to see company insiders, such as board members, trading in company stock, from time to time. However, most countries require that the company discloses such transactions to the market.
Insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing. But logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. As Peter Lynch said, ‘insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.’
View our latest analysis for ACI Worldwide
The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At ACI Worldwide
Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider sale was by John Shay for US$958k worth of shares, at about US$24.88 per share. That means that even when the share price was below the current price of US$26.55, an insider wanted to cash in some shares. Even though it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, that’s certainly not a positive sign, in our book. When an insider sells below the current price, it does tend to make us wonder about the current valuation. We note that the biggest single sale was 62.7% of John Shay’s holding.
In the last twelve months insiders netted US$1.2m for 46.78k shares sold. All up, insiders sold more shares in ACI Worldwide than they bought, over the last year. The sellers received a price of around US$25.08, on average. It’s not particularly great to see insiders were selling shares around current prices. Since insiders sell for many reasons, we wouldn’t put too much weight on it. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions over the last 12 months, below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below!
I will like ACI Worldwide better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.
Does ACI Worldwide Boast High Insider Ownership?
Many investors like to check how much of a company is owned by insiders. I reckon it’s a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. It’s great to see that ACI Worldwide insiders own 2.5% of the company, worth about US$80m. Most shareholders would be happy to see this sort of insider ownership, since it suggests that management incentives are well aligned with other shareholders.
What Might The Insider Transactions At ACI Worldwide Tell Us?
There haven’t been any insider transactions in the last three months — that doesn’t mean much. We don’t take much encouragement from the transactions by ACI Worldwide insiders. But we do like the fact that insiders own a fair chunk of the company. If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its future.
Of course ACI Worldwide may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of high quality companies.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
