In his day job, Alan Cleary is the managing director of Precise Mortgages. But this week has brought further evidence that he moonlights as a rather canny day trader in the shares of Precise’s parent company, OneSavings Bank (OSB).
On 12 June, with OSB’s stock having almost doubled from its March low, Mr Cleary sold 320,595 shares at £3.06 each and banked just under £1m in the process. That figure matches the amount the Birmingham-based mortgage market veteran parted with on 20 March, when he acquired half a million OSB shares at £2.01-a-pop. The company declined to comment on Mr Cleary's latest share sale.
Since his most recent sale, the bank’s market value has retraced by more than a tenth, suggesting other investors are starting to pay attention to the insider’s sense of the company’s value – even if he continues to hold a significant (though undisclosed) stake. Indeed, shareholders would also have done well had they followed Mr Cleary’s largest trade of the past six months: a £2.13m share disposal on 19 December, just days after the price of the FTSE 250 passed 22.5 times its trailing earnings.
The domestic-weighted index has only exceeded that valuation five times in the past decade, and then only for a few days at a time, according to FactSet data. With hindsight – and regardless of the subsequent impact of Covid-19 or OSB’s then-modest premium to book value – that looks like a decent time to have taken some profits in a buy-to-let specialist, given its gearing to the UK economy.
| Buys | ||||||
| Company | Director/PDMR | Date | No. of shares | Price (p) | Aggregate value (£) | Comments |
| Ultra Electronics | Tony Rice | 10 Jun 20 | 5,000 | 2,052 | 102,610 | Holds beneficial interest of 0.007% |
| Whitbread | Adam Crozier (ch) | 10 Jun 20 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 22,500 | |
| Whitbread | Frank Fiskers | 11 Jun 20 | 1,200 | 2,441 | 29,292 | |
| TalkTalk | Roger Taylor | 11 Jun 20 | 231,351 | 95.15 | 220,130 | |
| TalkTalk | Roger Taylor | 12 Jun 20 | 768,649 | 96.19 | 739,363 | |
| Hyve Group | Mark Shashoua (ceo) | 12 Jun 20 | 421,807 | 69 | 291,047 | |
| Hyve Group | Richard Last | 12 Jun 20 | 135,000 | 69 | 93,150 | |
| Dignity | Clive Whiley (ch) | 12 Jun 20 | 10,000 | 288.65 | 28,865 | |
| Time Out | Peter Dubens | 12 Jun 20 | 2,294,720 | 35 | 803,152 | |
| C&C | Stewart Gililand | 12 Jun 20 | 20,000 | 215.5 | 43,100 | |
| Ingenta | Sebastian White | 12 Jun 20 | 25,000 | 45 | 11,250 | Purchased by PCA Kestrel Partners |
| Nexus Infrastructure | Michael Morris (ceo) | 12 Jun 20 | 214,285 | 140 | 29,999,900 | Participation in share placing. Holds interest of 22.26% |
| DX | Paul Goodson | 12 Jun 20 | 200,000 | 12.4 | 24,800 | Holds interest of 0.47% |
| Johnson Matthey | Doug Webb | 15 Jun 20 | 2,400 | 2,054 | 49,298 | |
| Bango | Frank Bury | 15 Jun 20 | 25,000 | 157 | 39,250 | |
| SDL | Glenn Collinson | 15 Jun 20 | 10,373 | 517.5 | 53,680 | |
| BT | Leena Nair | 15 Jun 20 | 50,000 | 113 | 56,500 | |
| TalkTalk | Tristia Harrison | 16 Jun 20 | 223,045 | 89 | 198,510 | |
| Sells | ||||||
| Company | Director/PDMR | Date | No. of shares | Price (p) | Aggregate value (£) | Comments |
| XP Power | Duncan Penny (ceo) | 10 Jun 20 | 60,750 | 3,514 | 2,134,755 | Sold after exercising options at 946p per share |
| Brewin Dolphin | Grant Parkinson (coo) | 11 Jun 20 | 12,230 | 281 | 34,366 | |
| OneSavings Bank | Alan Cleary | 12 Jun 20 | 320,595 | 306.15 | 981,514 | |
| Rio Tinto | Arnaud Soirat | 16 Jun 20 | 9,500 | 5,406 | 513,581 |
