Global Payments Executives Are Making a Ton of Trades

Global Payments executives: Earlier this week, J Gerald Wilkins, a Director at Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN), reported the purchase of 2,500 company shares at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The acquisition took place last Friday, at a price of $56.7484 per share, totaling a transaction for $141,871. Following this, Wilkins holds 15,576 shares, valued at $895,152.

A couple of days before this purchase, on Oct. 16th, another insider, I William Jacobs, also a board director, had acquired 6,460 shares, using a non-qualified stock option (right to buy). He paid $19.355 per share and, although he then sold 2,218 on that same day, at the same price; the balance was positive. After the reported transactions, Jacobs owns 44,182 valued at $2,539,139.

Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN)

On the other hand, insider selling at Global Payments has been very strong this month. At least three insiders sold substantial amounts of stock (thousands of shares each) this month, reducing their holdings drastically. While one sold about 21% of his shares, the remaining two sold more than half of the stock that they held.

Valued at 17 times its earnings, and at a substantial discount to the 29.5x industry average, this stock does not look so bad. Nevertheless, I should mention that Global Payments is trading at a 52-week high and above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages of $50.68 and $48.49, respectively.

Growth projections are not bad either, and analysts expect the company to deliver average annual EPS growth rates above 10% over the next five years. Moreover, a 0.14% dividend yield sweetens up the deal a little bit.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no position in any stocks mentioned