Insider Buying Metric Points to Approaching Turnaround at These 3 Companies

PHI Inc. (NASDAQ:PHIIK) had one of its top executives purchase shares during the final two trading sessions of last week. President and Chief Operating Officer Lance F. Bospflug bought 20,000 shares at a weighted average cost of $20.35. After the recent transactions, the President and COO currently holds an ownership stake of 105,337 shares. PHI primarily operates as a provider of helicopter services to the oil and gas industry, and medical industry. Thus, the decreased level of offshore oil and gas exploration and production activities reduced the demand for the company’s offshore flight services this year, while the flight volume in its Air Medical segment was not enough to offset the struggling oil and gas segment. Even more to that, PHI anticipates that its revenue and profits from the Air Medical segment will be lower than last year in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, total flight hours for the third quarter totaled 36,296, down from 40,936 reported for the third quarter of 2014. The decrease in flight hours in the oil and gas segment accounted for the entirety of the overall decline and then some, falling by 5,587 hours year-over-year. Shares of PHI are down by more than 50% for the year. Greg Boland’s West Face Capital cut its position in PHI Inc. (NASDAQ:PHIIK) by 3% during the July-to-September period, ending the quarter with 4.28 million shares.

Lastly, we will examine the insider buying activity at MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM). Director Gregory M. Spierkel reported buying a new stake of 5,000 shares on Friday at prices in the range of $22.45-to-$22.55 per share. The Director also owns 15,381 Deferred Stock Units, each one of which is the economic equivalent of one share of common stock and is payable upon the Director’s termination of service. The shares of the owner and operator of casino resorts are up by 4% this year despite facing a challenging business environment in the Macau market. Macau’s total gaming revenue in November totaled $2.06 billion, which marked a decrease of 21.2% year-over-year. MGM’s net revenue generated in the Macau market during the nine-month period that ended September 30 was $1.72 billion, down by 33% relative to the same period of last year. On the other hand, the company’s net revenue generated from its wholly-owned domestic resorts increased to $4.92 billion from $4.79 billion. The number of hedge funds from our database with stakes in MGM decreased to 49 from 58 during the September quarter, whereas the value of these stakes grew to $1.91 billion from $1.74 billion quarter-over-quarter. Daniel S. Och’s OZ Management is the largest equity holder of MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) within our database, holding 15.84 million shares as of September 30.

Disclosure: None