AbbVie Insiders bought the stock when it traded for new lows
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AbbVie
The stock has lost nearly a third of its value this year, but a company leader and a director recently bought millions of dollars of shares in the biopharmaceutical company.
26, but that would not be known by looking at the stock chart, as the shares have been sliding since that day. The AbbVie share has fallen 28.9% to date through Friday's close, and the big overhang has been the company's June agreement to buy
Allergan
(AGN), the manufacturer of Botox. Also disappointing for AbbVie investors – they have nothing to say about the deal going through.
The AbbVie stock hit an intraday low of $ 63.31 on Wednesday – a price it hasn't traded at since March 2017 – and the company's insiders bought that shares traded down to that level.
Director Roxanne S. Austin paid $ 4.3 million from July 30 to August 1 for a total of 65,000 AbbVie shares, an average price per share of $ 65.93. Austin has been AbbVie's CEO since 2013, and now owns 117,114 shares, according to a form she submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. She is president of Austin Investment Advisors, a private investment and consulting firm. Austin's most recent open market purchase of the AbbVie stock was her first, in late June, when she paid $ 776,250 for 11,500 shares. Two other insiders also bought shares at that time.
Henry O. Gosebruch, AbbVie's chief strategy officer and executive vice president, paid $ 29 million July 29 for 30,000 AbbVie shares, an average share price of $ 67.28. It is the first open market acquisition of shares for Gosebruch, which began in December 2015, and previously purchased shares only through stock prices. He now owns 75,763 in a personal account, and an additional 2,276 shares through a trust.
AbbVie refused to make Austin and Gosebruch available for comment on their stock purchases.
Inside Scoop is a regular Barron function that covers corporate transactions of corporate executives and board members – so-called insiders – as well as major shareholders, politicians and other prominent individuals. Because of their insider status, these investors are required to disclose stock trading with the Securities and Exchange Commission or other regulatory groups.
Write to Ed Lin at edward.lin@barrons.com
