It hasn't been a great week thus far for the Appen Ltd (ASX: APX) share price. Appen shares may be up a seemingly-healthy 2.17% to $4.24 a share so far this Wednesday. But the artificial intelligence (AI) share is still down by more than 27% since Friday last week.
The company has also lost a staggering 61% of its value over 2022 thus far and remains down almost 90% from its August 2020 all-time high of over $40 a share.
So the pains of Appen shares this week might provoke some investors to ask 'what are the insiders doing?' After all, the moves of the people closest to a company's operations can be a great insight into what the future might bring for a company.
Perhaps especially so for Appen. Appen has just announced the appointment of a new independent non-executive director in Lynn Mickleburgh. This new position was announced on 29 July and took effect that day.
Well, according to an ASX release yesterday, Mickleburgh hasn't yet got any skin in the Appen game. The ASX release reveals she holds no Appen shares whatsoever.
So when were Appen's insiders last buying (or selling) the company's shares?
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Have Appen insiders been buying the company's shares?
Well, the last ASX notice for an insider transaction came back in May. That showed CEO Mark Brayan being issued with $1.5 million worth of shares, perhaps a component of his remuneration package.
Before that, the last voluntary transaction came from Appen's non-executive chair Richard Freudenstein. Records show Freudenstein buying just over $100,000 worth of shares back in March.
In the same month, CEO Brayan also picked up more than $700,000 worth of Appen shares. Another non-executive director in Venessa Liu picked up close to $15,000 worth of shares in March as well.
Going off of the Appen share price performance since March, these transactions have probably cost their executors between 30-40% of their original capital on today's pricing.
So that's what Appen's insiders have been doing over the past few months with Appen shares. Not too much buying, one could conclude. But also no selling.
At the current Appen share price, this ASX tech share has a market capitalisation of $523.4 million, with a dividend yield of 2.36%.
