Notable Insider Selling at Masco Corp (MAS) and 2 Other Companies

Burlington Stores Inc. (NYSE:BURL)’s insider trading activity on the selling side has been quite high lately; however, some sales were either connected with freshly-exercised stock options or conducted under trading plans. In terms of spur-of-the-moment insider sales, we’ll start with Fred Hand, Executive Vice President of Stores, who jettisoned 25,000 shares on Wednesday at prices ranging from $52.97 to $53.41 per share, cutting his stake to 55,109 shares. Marc Katz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, sold 12,000 shares last Monday at prices that fell between $52.10 and $54.25 per share and currently owns 99,936 shares.

Shares of Burlington Stores are 28% in the green year-to-date, so the question of why insiders have been cashing out portions of their equity holdings becomes somewhat irrelevant. Burlington Stores is a highly-recognized off-price retailer of branded apparel, with more than 500 retail stores spread across the United States. The company’s net sales for fiscal year 2015 that ended January 30 grew by 5.9% year-over-year to $5.10 billion. The top-line growth was partially driven by comparable store sales growth of 2.1%. More importantly, the management of Burlington Stores anticipates its 2016 net sales to increase by 6.5%-to-7.5%, and its comparable store sales to grow by 2.5%-to-3.5%. Just recently, analysts at Citigroup downgraded the stock to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’, but maintained their price target on the stock at $58, which follows the exceptional stock performance of Burlington Stores since the beginning of 2016. In spite of the recent surge in its share price, Burlington Stores appears to be quite cheap relative to its competitors. The stock is priced at 17.20-times expected earnings, below the forward P/E multiple of 19.10 for Ross Stores Inc. (NASDAQ:ROST) and the ratio of 19.50 for TJX Companies Inc. (NYSE:TJX). Ken Griffin’s Citadel Advisors LLC trimmed its position in Burlington Stores Inc. (NYSE:BURL) by 40% during the December quarter, to 1.46 million shares.

Disclosure: None