Insider Trading Alerts: Marathon Petroleum Corp (MPC) and More

A senior vice president at Key Energy Services, Inc. (NYSE:KEG) was buying the stock at prices between $6.30 and $6.40 per share. Key is down 24% in the last year, as the oil and gas drilling and exploration services company has seen low earnings. The sell-side is predicting something of a recovery here as well, and so the stock is valued at 13 times consensus earnings for 2014. Drilling activity is tied to macro factors and so the stock’s beta is quite high at 2.8. Activist investor Mark Rachesky’s MHR Fund Management is a major shareholder in Key (research more stocks MHR owns).

Another energy stock where we have tracked insider buying activity recently is small independent exploration and production company Swift Energy Company (NYSE:SFY). Swift has been another big loser in the market over the last year, and the most recent data shows 17% of the float held short as many market players remain bearish. The company’s most recent quarterly report shows rising sales and net income, and the trailing and forward P/Es are 19 and 15 respectively. That is a premium to larger E&P companies, however, and revenue growth has not been that high relative to a year ago.

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