Four Services Stocks Insiders Love Including Western Union

Several officers and Board members have been buying shares of Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI). Moneygram, like Western Union, is a payment services company whose stock price has fallen in the last year (it is down 27%, roughly even with its larger peer) likely on the prospect of electronic payments becoming more ubiquitous. At a market capitalization of about $800 million (an average of almost 90,000 shares are traded daily, and the current stock price is about $14, so there is over $1 million in daily dollar volume), the current-year P/E is 12. It doesn’t look as appealing to us as Western Union does.

Two Board members bought shares of Checkpoint Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CKP), a retail theft prevention products and services company with a market capitalization of about $490 million (in this case, an average of 180,000 shares have been traded per day in the last three months, and the stock is trading at about $12). Checkpoint is unprofitable on a trailing basis- it was in the red for every quarter from Q4 2011 to Q3 2012- and in the third quarter of last year its revenue slipped 13% from the third quarter of the previous year. The company is expected to recover this year, with analyst estimates implying a current-year P/E of 16, but we are skeptical of that level of optimism.

Disclosure: I own no shares of any stocks mentioned in this article.