One Vehicle-Repair Giant and Two Biotech Companies with Clusters of Insider Buying

Ignyta Inc. (NASDAQ:RXDX) saw three top-tier executives purchase shares in the past two weeks. On March 17, Jonathan E. Lim, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Ignyta, purchased 24,852 shares at prices that ranged from $5.35 to $5.78 per share, all of which are held by City Hill Venture Partners I LLC that currently owns 3.35 million shares (Mr. Lim is the manager of City Hill Ventures LLC, which is the manager of City Hill Ventures Partners I LLC). The CEO also holds a direct ownership stake of 97,000 shares. Chief Medical Officer James L. Freddo snapped up a new stake of 3,000 shares on the same day at a weighted average cost of $5.39 per unit. Last but not least, Chief Financial Officer Jacob Chacko bought two separate blocks of 5,000 shares on March 17 at a weighted average price of $5.64, boosting his overall stake to 42,838 shares.

Ignyta is a precision oncology biotechnology company focused on developing drug candidates that not only shrink tumors, but also eradicate the source of cancer relapse and recurrence. The company’s leading product candidate, entrectinib (previously known as RXDX-101), is a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor studied in a Phase 2 clinical study and two Phase 1 clinical studies for the treatment of solid tumors, as well as one Phase 1/1b clinical study in pediatric patients with advanced solid tumor malignancies. Ignyta’s current pipeline of compounds also includes taladegib, a small molecule hedgehog/smoothened antagonist; RXDX-105, a small molecule multikinase inhibitor with potent activity against targets as RET and BRAF; and RXDX-106, a pseudo-irreversible inhibitor of TAM (Tyro-3, Axl and Mer) and cMET. Shares of Ignyta are down 34% in the past 12 months, after having dropped 53% in 2016 alone. Therefore, the recent insider buying activity at the company is pointing to the management’s confidence in the future potential of Ignyta’s current pipeline. A total number of 15 hedge funds from our database were invested in the biotechnology company at the end of 2015, amassing 32.20% of its total number of outstanding shares. Kevin Kotler’s Broadfin Capital LLC was the largest shareholder of Ignyta Inc. (NASDAQ:RXDX), among the funds we track, with 2.26 million shares, held as of the end of 2015.