Patriot National Inc (PN) High Insider Trading

More insider buy notifications in the mid 7’s were filed today. Not sure if this is more confidence of management or possibly the company buying up the share price. Since many of these buys have been personal significant increases and not just “by corporation” purchases, I’m leaning toward significant upside is still coming for this company.
Only thing that has me wondering is why these insiders were not more active a few weeks ago. It could be an internal campaign being led by the team charged with increasing shareholder value where they are encouraging more insider buys.
http://ir.patnat.com/InsiderFilings

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And yet another insider filed today. He increased his position by 7.2% at a price of $8.08 a share. There has been 5 insider buy filings in just the last week**. Three of them have been the CEO.**

http://ir.patnat.com/Doc/Index?did=35924519

This raises a question I have for those on this board that have substantial wealth. Seems like the CEO, who owns over 12M shares, could easily spend 5% of his wealth to bid up the price. Ie. Spend a million now which creates momentum and attracts others that also bid up the price, and then sell later when the momentum stalls. This can’t be done successfully with high liquidity stocks, but seems very plausible for a microcap stock with low trading volume.
Have any of you personally tried this?

I am reasonably certain that there are restrictions on the sale of stock by an insider, so I do not believe the CEO (or any “insider” for that matter) could completely control the timing on the sale of shares. It is an interesting question, though.

Actually, I just clicked on the link, and it appears the shares were SOLD for $8.08, not Bought.

Correct, shares were disposed (D), not acquired (A), for $8.08

I just went through some of the SEC filings, and what I’ve been able to piece together is that, on 1/15/2015, he acquired 22,059 shares, at a cost of $0.0 per share. It looks like he had a stock option he exercised (although please feel free to double-check the filings).

He ended up with 44,118 shares, and I don’t see that he ever paid for any of them (although, again, feel free to double-check the filings).

So, at least in my mind, to sell half of his shares at what looks like a profit of $8.08 per share seems perfectly reasonable to me. There are many reasons for an insider to sell shares, ie- he might just need the money for something else.

It is when an insider buys shares that I get excited. The other thing for me here is that he sold them for only about 48 cents per share more than the CEO paid for shares recently, so this concerned me at first, but after dealing further, I am not concerned.

I’d welcome others’ thoughts.

…to sell half of his shares…

He only sold 2,794 shares, not 27,940. He still has 41,324 left.

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Thanks for the correction az5speedy and foodles. I re-read the 10 prior filings to today’s filing to doublecheck and they were all actually acquire (A) buys. Sorry for the hasty error.

I like to use the NASDAQ site to view SEC filings.

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/pn/sec-filings

The most recent form 4 for Mariano:
http://secfilings.nasdaq.com/filingFrameset.asp?FileName=000…

This shows that he “owns” shares three different ways.


 1,980,088 shares Indirect "By Corporation", whatever that means.
12,022,622 shares Direct.
   626,428 shares Indirect "By Steven M. Mariano Trust"
----------
14,629,138 shares total

What has me curious is that Indirect “By Corporation” item. I have never seen that before. Looking up at the top I see that he is a “10% Owner”. Trying to decipher the SEC instructions in relation to that “By Corporation” declaration I have come up with what is probably a completely bogus idea. My idea is that those shares are owned by PN itself, and the 70,000 “Acquired” represents part of their stock buyback. My idea requires that he has to report what PN owns because he owns at least 10% of PN, so what PN owns he has a " beneficial ownership" in them.

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Ok I’ve completely lost track of whether these were buys or sells.

Anyhow the price rose to the resistance level around 8.20 which was there on the way down. Let’s see if the price reversal is a short term correction or whether 8.20 represents a real barrier for the share price momentum.

Ant

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My idea requires that he has to report what PN owns because he owns at least 10% of PN, so what PN owns he has a " beneficial ownership" in them.

RHinCT - I agree that these forms are unnecessarily confusing with codes that make you look everything up. I also have not seen the “By Corporation”.
You should note that out of the 27.18M outstanding shares, the CEO owns a whopping 12.02M shares directly which is 44% of the company. It amazes me to think how every $1 change in share price the guy is $12M richer on paper.

I thought those form 4 words mean the following:
“By Corporation” is an indirect ownership that the CEO has because the company bought back shares?
“Direct Ownership” are shares he owns as an individual.
“By Steven M. Mariano Trust” is another indirect ownership thru a Trust he has set up to procure shares as well.

I welcome more experienced SEC Form readers on this board to share what these indirect ownerships really mean.

and Ant - I am truly sorry to confuse you, but I think you do understand that there has been a lot of insider BUY filings prior to this last sell filing. We are of course going to go thru periods of people taking their profits when a company rises this fast.

It amazes me to think how every $1 change in share price the guy is $12M richer on paper.

Word. Amazing is an understatement.

It amazes me to think how every $1 change in share price the guy is $12M richer on paper.

Keep in mind too how it must have felt when it dropped from $13.08 to $7.79 in a single trading day, and then kept dropping.

Anyhow the price rose to the resistance level around 8.20 which was there on the way down. Let’s see if the price reversal is a short term correction or whether 8.20 represents a real barrier for the share price momentum.

It closed at 8.51 today, whatever that means in relation to levels and barriers.

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Keep in mind too how it must have felt when it dropped from $13.08 to $7.79 in a single trading day, and then kept dropping.

But don’t you think the CEO knew what was happening as it was driven down to hit the low price in those 10 days detailed in the prospectus for the special few investors? It is only scary when you don’t understand why the price is moving. Once one knows the rules of the market maker’s game, you can seize the opportunities with confidence and not fear.

This one seems destined to double again back up to its 52 week high of $19.32.

Once one knows the rules of the market maker’s game, you can seize the opportunities with confidence and not fear.

Yes, you can, and some even do.

Short article about the company’s mission and the CIO of PN.

http://www.basearticles.com/Article/223099/Patriot-National-…

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Interesting. I was amused by the line:

She has made it her mission to go past what people believe is possible and create the impossible to fix problems you never knew you even had.

I’d rather avoid creating problems, especially impossible to fix problems. :sunglasses:

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Short article about the company’s mission and the CIO of PN.

Hi, F1Fun, I noted that the “article” was a little puff piece that the CIO wrote about herself. It puzzled me so I googled the site BaseArticles, where it was published, and discovered that it’s like a little social media site where anyone can write a short article and publish it online. If anything, it concerned me that the CIO has nothing better to do with her time than writing an article blowing her own horn. Just saying…

Saul

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Saul - Yes I was going to post how ridiculous it was that she wrote about herself as if it was written by someone else, but decided to focus on what the message or identity the company is trying to establish. I find the spin interesting that they are a tech company in a workers compensation insurance industry. They seem to be pushing, though admittedly via low grade channels, that their software saves companies money that the companies don’t even know they are wasting. We’ll see this year if the large distribution channels for their many products creates lots of recurring payments from customers or not. They are still a tiny company in their industry and I’m enjoying watching it evolve.

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