When a single insider purchases stock, it is typically not a major deal. However, when multiple insiders purchase stock, like in Spectris plc's (LON:SXS) instance, it's good news for shareholders.

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.

View our latest analysis for Spectris

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At Spectris

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by CEO & Executive Director Andrew Heath for UK£149k worth of shares, at about UK£25.49 per share. That implies that an insider found the current price of UK£28.17 per share to be enticing. Of course they may have changed their mind. But this suggests they are optimistic. While we always like to see insider buying, it's less meaningful if the purchases were made at much lower prices, as the opportunity they saw may have passed. Happily, the Spectris insiders decided to buy shares at close to current prices.

Spectris insiders may have bought shares in the last year, but they didn't sell any. The chart below shows insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last year. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are 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. From looking at our data, insiders own UK£2.0m worth of Spectris stock, about 0.07% of the company. We consider this fairly low insider ownership.

So What Do The Spectris Insider Transactions Indicate?

There haven't been any insider transactions in the last three months -- that doesn't mean much. On a brighter note, the transactions over the last year are encouraging. The transactions are fine but it'd be more encouraging if Spectris insiders bought more shares in the company. In addition to knowing about insider transactions going on, it's beneficial to identify the risks facing Spectris. For instance, we've identified 3 warning signs for Spectris (1 can't be ignored) you should be aware of.

But note: Spectris may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.