Gibbons directors stamp approval

So, to tap into this area, Stanley Gibbons has acquired US-based online collectibles trading platform, bidstart.com, a business mainly focused on the stamp and postcard market and which has sold more than 3.5m items since inception. Of the 6.4m items on its site, around 3m are stamp lots. The real opportunity for Stanley Gibbons is to use its own expertise, brand, network and financial strength to create a much bigger collectibles trading platform for bidstart.

The directors backed the placing, which explains the raft of buys over the past few weeks. True, the dilutive effects of the placing and the investment in bidstart mean that profit growth will be held back next year; broker Peel Hunt expects pre-tax profits to edge up from £5.5m to just £5.7m. However, this deal could transform the company's business model if it can make inroads into the online US stamp market. Priced on 12.5 times earnings estimates, it’s worth following the directors’ lead. Buy.

News that David Stevens, chief operating officer of car insurer Admiral (ADM), and his wife had spent £996,450 earlier this month buying up 97,500 of the company’s shares (at 1,022p a share) looks like a big vote of confidence. Just where such confidence comes from, however, is less clear. After all, motor premium rates are falling fast and that soft market backdrop was confirmed by Admiral in its trading update on 2 November. Such prospects led chief executive Henry Engelhardt to conclude that “the sensible strategy in this part of the cycle is to slow our rate of growth” - which is hardly the most encouraging message for investors. It’s also worth remembering that Admiral off-loads most of the risk in its book to the big international reinsurers such as Munich Re, leaving the group forced to share its profits with third parties. What’s more, considerable uncertainty hangs over the motor market more generally now that the Competition Commission has launched a probe into this sector that could take two years to complete. Reflecting such pressures, Admiral’s shares have slumped nearly 40 per cent since June 2011 and catalysts to significantly reverse that slide are hard to spot.

James Agnew, senior non-executive director of Petroceltic (PCI) has acquired an initial stake of 140,000 shares in the oil and gas explorer at a price of 7.04p. His lead was swiftly followed by the group’s chief operating officer, David Thomas, who forked out £34,205 for an additional 504,000 shares, taking his stake to 3.14m shares. The purchases came ahead of news that the group had successfully expended its portfolio in Egypt - the principal operating region of its new merger partner Melrose Resources. Petroceltic was awarded the largely unexplored Block 12 'El Qa'a Plain' in a recent Egyptian bidding round, in conjunction with operator Dana Petroleum and Beach Petroleum. As part of the award, the partners will need to acquire at least 450 sq kms of 3D seismic data and drill one exploration well over the next four years. Activity certainly seems to be picking up in the wake of the Melrose deal; Petroceltic has also just announced that in 2013 it intends to drill 10 wells in Egypt, the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Italy and the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq.

Director buys

Director sells

Note: *Placing ** ADRs

Table compiled by Robert Ansted.

Key to abbreviations: ch = chairman; ce = chief executive; cfo = chief financial officer; fd = finance director; coo = chief operating officer; cs =company secretary; md = managing director