Investors who take an interest in Imperial Brands PLC (LON:IMB) should definitely note that the Non-Executive Director, Robert Kunze-Concewitz, recently paid UK£15.58 per share to buy UK£156k worth of the stock. That's a very decent purchase to our minds and it grew their holding by a solid 25%.

View our latest analysis for Imperial Brands

Imperial Brands Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by insider Oliver Tant for UK£159k worth of shares, at about UK£15.77 per share. That means that an insider was happy to buy shares at above the current price of UK£15.69. It's very possible they regret the purchase, but it's more likely they are bullish about the company. In our view, the price an insider pays for shares is very important. As a general rule, we feel more positive about a stock if insiders have bought shares at above current prices, because that suggests they viewed the stock as good value, even at a higher price.

In the last twelve months Imperial Brands insiders were buying shares, but not selling. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

There are always plenty of stocks that insiders are buying. So if that suits your style you could check each stock one by one or you could take a look at this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

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. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Our data indicates that Imperial Brands insiders own about UK£4.2m worth of shares (which is 0.03% of the company). Overall, this level of ownership isn't that impressive, but it's certainly better than nothing!

So What Does This Data Suggest About Imperial Brands Insiders?

It's certainly positive to see the recent insider purchase. And the longer term insider transactions also give us confidence. On this analysis the only slight negative we see is the fairly low (overall) insider ownership; their transactions suggest that they are quite positive on Imperial Brands stock. In addition to knowing about insider transactions going on, it's beneficial to identify the risks facing Imperial Brands. At Simply Wall St, we've found that Imperial Brands has 3 warning signs (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) that deserve your attention before going any further with your analysis.