Farhad Nanji, a director at PennyMac Financial Services (PFSI), recently added 160,854 shares to his holdings. The buy increased his stake by just over 4 percent, and came to a total purchase price of $10.45 million.
This follows up from a buy from the director a week before, in the amount of 282,872 shares, an $18.2 million buy. Going further back, there is a mix of insider buys and sales, with more buys from directors and sales largely from insiders.
Overall, insiders own 14.6 percent of the company.
Shares of the mortgage servicing company are up a mere 6 percent in the past year, far underperforming the stock market as a whole.
That’s likely due to the company’s declining revenue and earnings growth as mortgage refinances have both slowed down and led to lower interest rates and profitability for service companies.
Nevertheless, with a high profit margin of 33 percent and with shares trading under 5 times forward earnings, the company can likely move higher as the housing market stabilizes in the months ahead.
Action to take: Investors may like shares here, as they yield 1.2 percent on top of being a value play with room to move higher. The payout ratio is low, so there’s likely room for more dividend increases, however the company hasn’t hiked its dividend recently.
Disclosure: The author of this article has no position in the company mentioned here, but may trade after the next 72 hours. The author receives no compensation from any of the companies mentioned in this article.