Pascal Desroches, a senior executive VP at AT&T (T), recently bought another 19,976 shares. The buy increased the VP’s stake by nearly 12 percent, and came to a total price just under $589,000.
Company CEO John Stankey also bought 34,614 shares on the same day. The CEO paid just over $997,000 to add to his stake. Overall, insiders own just 0.1 percent of company shares.
This duo of insider buys marks the first trades from company insiders since last July. Insiders have been buyers of shares in the past two years, with the last insider sale occurring in July 2019.
The buys come after the company reported solid earnings, but shares slid following an announcement to spin off the company’s media assets, along with a dividend cut.
The drop in shares has sent them negative over the past year, even as earnings have grown by nearly 64 percent.
Action to take: Investors may like shares for the value of the possible spinoff down the line. However, the recent dividend news makes the trade poor for income investors, although the total valuation of the post-split companies may rally from here in the coming months.
For traders, there isn’t likely to be substantial upside in shares, and a deal may impact the share price of AT&T. Existing shareholders may want to try and stem the loss with a covered call trade, if they’re not willing to completely exit the trade at this time.
Disclosure: The author of this article has a position in the stock mentioned here, and may make additional trades on this company after the next 72 hours. The author receives no compensation from any of the companies mentioned in this article.