Massive Clusters of Insider Buying at United Continental Holdings Inc. (UAL) and Two Other Companies

Four Different Insiders at Peapack-Gladstone Bank Bought Shares This Week

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corp (NASDAQ:PGC) registered a cluster of insider buying this week, which involved four different insiders. To start with, Eric H. Waser, Executive Vice President and Head of Commercial Banking, bought 100 shares on Monday for $18.57 each and 900 shares on Wednesday at $19.75 apiece, boosting his holding to 27,207 shares. Chairman F. Duffield Meyercord acquired 10,000 shares on Tuesday at a price of $19.50 per share, which increased his ownership to 62,062 shares. More importantly, Chief Executive Officer and President Douglas L. Kennedy snapped up 2,000 shares on the same day for $19.51 each, boosting his ownership stake to 174,446 shares. An additional 1,000 shares were purchased by Chief Financial Officer and Senior Executive Vice President, Jeffrey J. Carfora, who currently owns 99,338 shares. The 1,000-share block was purchased on Tuesday for $18.86 each.

Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corp is a bank holding company for Peapack-Gladstone Bank, which also has a Private Wealth Management division. The bank’s wealth management division is one of the largest New Jersey-based trust and investment businesses with $3.32 billion of assets under administration, which differentiates the bank from over competitors. Fee income from the Private Wealth Management Division reached $4.30 million for the first quarter of 2016 and accounted for roughly 15% of the company’s total revenue, as compared to $4.03 million reported for the first quarter of 2015.

Shares of Peapack-Gladstone are up 18% in the past month, but they are still 3% in the red year-to-date. The stock is priced at 14.2-times expected earnings, slightly above the forward P/E multiple of 12.0 for the Regional Banks industry. Matthey Lindenbaum’s Basswood Capital owned nearly 833,000 shares of Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corp (NASDAQ:PGC) on December 31.

Disclosure: None