CEO James Brock and several key insiders of Pennsylvanian coal miner Consol Energy (US:CEIX) have been seen selling shares recently at record profit levels. CEIX’s share price has posted impressive gains this year with the stock up a whopping +318% from $22.71 where it started on the 1st of January, 2022.

According to Fintel’s research, 6 net insiders have sold shares in the company over the past 3 months. This number of net insiders ranks the company in the bottom 9% of 205,815 screened companies across the globe.

Four of these insiders sold shares this week with Form 4’s being filed to the SEC by the company on Friday.

These included CEO, James Brock who sold 50,000 shares (or around 10% of his total position) at an average price of $67.60 per share. Brock banked $3.38 million in proceeds from the transaction and now owns 489,334 shares post the sale.

Chief Administrative Officer, Kurt Salvatori offloaded 14,324 shares at $67.21 for just shy of $1 million in sale proceeds. Salvatori retained 16,407 shares following the transaction.

Chief Accounting Officer, John Rothka sold 2,000 shares at $70.36 for $140,720 in proceeds. Rothka retained 16,194 shares under ownership following the transaction.

Lastly, General Counsel & Secretary Martha Wiegand took the opportunity to sell 7,000 shares at an average price of $67.03 equating to $469,000 in proceeds. Weigand, after selling 10% of her position, will now hold 70,009 shares post transaction.

Although it looks like insiders have been selling, for some contrast CEIX continues to generate significant institutional interest with growing levels of accumulation in the company. Fintel’s institutional ownership accumulation score of 85.16 is bullish on the stock as it ranks CEIX in the top 5% of companies with the highest level of growing interest.

In total, CEIX has 454 institutions that collectively own 33 million shares in the company. A few of these institutions include Dimensional Funds, Greenlight Capital, Assenagon Asset Management, Key Group and Prudential Financial.

The graph to the right displays the total level of institutional ownership over the past 5 years, against share price movements.

Broker thoughts:

Following the release of the most recent Q2 results in early August, analyst Lucas Pipes from B Riley Securities noted that they expect the CEIX to allocate greater capital towards ‘returns’ once the firm’s debt target has been achieved. Post result, B Riley increased their price target from $63 to $79 based on a better pricing outlook.

Nathan Martin from The Benchmark Company sees the potential for significant cash returns once the company once the $300 million target debt level is achieved. The analyst increased his target from $60 to $72 post result and remains ‘buy’ rated on the stock.

The three sell-side institutions that cover the stock all have ‘buy’ recommendations with an average price target across the cohort of $75.3, suggesting 4% capital upside remains in the stock.

While the market views the company as ‘near fully valued’, they continue to see potential upside from excess cash flows that can be delivered to shareholders in the form of special dividends and potential future buybacks.

This article originally appeared on Fintel

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