Devina Rankin, a director at Keycorp (KEY), recently bought 10,000 shares. The buy is an initial stake for the director. The total cost for the stake came to $114,900.
This marks the first insider buy since the company’s institutional bank head bought 75,000 shares in May. He paid $733,500 to do so. Company insiders have mostly been buyers since March, following the drop in bank stocks. And they were largely sellers last year at higher prices.
Overall, insiders at the bank own 0.3 percent of shares.
Even though prices have stabilized, the regional bank is down 44 percent over the past year. Earnings are down somewhat on reduced lending activity in the past year, although the profit margin looks solid at 24 percent.
Currently, the bank trades at about a 10 percent to its book value, giving it some downside production in a weak real estate market.
Action to take: At current prices, shares have some moderate upside ahead. Plus, the drop in price has pushed the bank’s yield to 7.4 percent. The bank still has more than enough earnings to cover its dividend payment for the foreseeable future.
For traders, the October $12 calls, last going for about $0.35, could see high-double-digit returns on any bump higher in shares in the coming months.
Disclosure: The author of this article has no position in the company mentioned here, but may trade after the next 72 hours. The author receives no compensation from any of the companies mentioned in this article.