C&W bosses shell out over £½m on shares
Bosses at Cable and Wireless spent a combined total of more than £600,000 on shares in the telecoms firm today.
Chairman John Pluthero bought 160,000 shares at 148.5p each, paying a total of £237,600 and lifting his stake to just over 1.6m shares.
Meanwhile, finance boss Tony Rice splashed out £375,000 on 250,000 shares at 150p each, boosting his holding to just over 3.5m shares.
Last week, the company set new growth targets for the next five years in its Europe, Asia & US business, aiming for revenue growth of between 5% and 8% per year and EBITDA growth of between 20% and 25%.
C&W shares did well in anticipation of the announcement, but some analysts questioned the achievability of the targets, while a wave of profit taking also weighed.
Simon Beart, chief executive at Worthington Nichols, bought almost £30,000 of shares in the air conditioning installer today as a strong trading statement sent the price sharply higher.
He took 350,000 shares in the AIM-listed company at 8.1p each for a stake of around 0.39%.
Shares in the company surged more than 15% to 11p Tuesday after it blamed its poor full year figures on the previous management and said the new board has halted loss-making activities.
"The new board, appointed on 21 November 2007, has addressed the major issues and has made the appropriate cost reductions. As a result, whilst the next reporting period to 31 March 2008 will show further substantial losses, following the second restructuring, we expect group trading to stabilise, thereby protecting our net cash balances," it said.
For the year to September, turnover rose to £25.96m from £3.26m previously while pre-tax losses increased to £42.1m compared with £4.1m last year due to higher admin costs.
Top Director Buys
Cable & Wireless (CW.)
Director name: Mr William Anthony Rice
Amount purchased: 250,000 @ 150.00p
Value: £375,000
Cable & Wireless (CW.)
Director name: Mr John Pluthero
Amount purchased: 160,000 @ 148.50p
Value: £237,600
Intermediate Capital Group (ICP)
Director name: Mr Philip Keller
Amount purchased: 10,000 @ 1,437.00p
Value: £143,700
SQS Software Quality Systems (SQS)
Director name: Mr Rudolf van Megen
Amount purchased: 19,000 @ 275.00p
Value: £52,250
Brit Insurance Holding (BRE)
(Article continues below)Advertisement
Director name: Mr John Barton
Amount purchased: 20,000 @ 216.50p
Value: £43,300
Media Corporation (MDC)
Director name: Mr Jason Drummond
Amount purchased: 1,000,000 @ 3.00p
Value: £30,000
Worthington Nicholls (WNG)
Director name: Mr Simon Beart
Amount purchased: 350,000 @ 8.10p
Value: £28,350
Inmarsat (ISAT)
Director name: Admiral James Ellis Jr
Amount purchased: 5,400 @ 454.00p
Value: £24,516
Birmingham City (BMC)
Director name: Mr David Gold
Amount purchased: 50,000 @ 39.00p
Value: £19,500
Brit Insurance Holding (BRE)
Director name: Mr Clive Frederick Coates
Amount purchased: 8,262 @ 214.70p
Value: £17,739
Top Director Sells
BSS Group (BTSM)
Director name: Mr Peter T Warry
Amount sold: 53,332 @ 363.00p
Value: £193,595
