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Viewing insider transactions for CVS Health Corporation's (NYSE:CVS ) over the last year, we see that insiders were net sellers. This means that a larger number of shares were sold by insiders in relation to shares purchased.
While we would never suggest that investors should base their decisions solely on what the directors of a company have been doing, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether.
See our latest analysis for CVS Health
CVS Health Insider Transactions Over The Last Year
Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider sale was by the Executive VP & Group President, Prem Shah, for US$2.3m worth of shares, at about US$76.95 per share. We generally don't like to see insider selling, but the lower the sale price, the more it concerns us. It's of some comfort that this sale was conducted at a price well above the current share price, which is US$48.01. So it may not tell us anything about how insiders feel about the current share price. The only individual insider seller over the last year was Prem Shah.
In the last twelve months insiders purchased 10.18k shares for US$554k. On the other hand they divested 29.47k shares, for US$2.3m. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below!
I will like CVS Health better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of undervalued and small cap stocks with considerable, recent, insider buying.
Insider Ownership
Another way to test the alignment between the leaders of a company and other shareholders is to look at how many shares they own. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. Insiders own 0.09% of CVS Health shares, worth about US$57m. While this is a strong but not outstanding level of insider ownership, it's enough to indicate some alignment between management and smaller shareholders.
So What Does This Data Suggest About CVS Health Insiders?
The fact that there have been no CVS Health insider transactions recently certainly doesn't bother us. Still, the insider transactions at CVS Health in the last 12 months are not very heartening. But we do like the fact that insiders own a fair chunk of the company. So while it's helpful to know what insiders are doing in terms of buying or selling, it's also helpful to know the risks that a particular company is facing. To that end, you should learn about the 3 warning signs we've spotted with CVS Health (including 1 which shouldn't be ignored).