Dean Foods, Bruker, and More Stocks With Recent Insider Purchases

Page 2 of 2

A Board member at NuStar GP Holdings, LLC (NYSE:NSH), which serves as the general partner for pipeline operator NuStar Energy L.P., bought 28,600 shares of the LLC’s stock at about $27 per share. The Board member, William Greehey, has purchased over 200,000 shares since the beginning of November. The GP- which has a market capitalization of $1.3 billion- pays a high dividend yield, and has a good record of increasing dividend payments. It might be a better income buy than many other pipeline companies, though of course it’s important to check that there won’t be significant dividend cuts. The stock has come down in price this year.

$890 million market cap biotechnology company Exelixis, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXEL) had the Chief Medical Officer buy 25,000 shares of stock at an average price of $4.39. The development-stage Exelixis is unprofitable on a trailing basis and is not expected to have positive profits next year either. While the insider purchase would normally be a good sign, the stock is widely shorted (the most recent data shows that 44% of the outstanding shares are held short) and we’d have to think that a number of investors have concluded that the stock is overvalued. We would avoid it.

Celsion Corporation (NASDAQ:CLSN), a $310 million market cap drug developer (on average, over a million shares have been traded per day over the last three months, so there should be plenty of dollar volume), was another stock seeing insider buying. Max Link, a Board member, bought 14,000 shares on December 10th at an average price of $7.60 per share. It’s another development stage company, and also has a number of shorts, but the stock price has risen over 300% in the last year. Investors who are more familiar with healthcare might want to look at it, but again we’d be too wary of recommending a negative-earnings stock that many other market players are shorting.

Page 2 of 2