Insider: big director deals at Glencore, Diageo and Vistry

A £1.4 million buy-the-dip move by the long-serving finance boss of Glencore (LSE:GLEN) backed the miner’s shares in the teeth of Friday’s stock market rout.

Australian Steven Kalmin’s dealings took place at a four-year low of 233p - half the price seen in July after last week’s tariffs turmoil extended this year’s poor run.

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Non-executive director Martin Gilbert also viewed Friday’s 9% share price slump as a buying opportunity after he disclosed a more modest investment of £11,750 at 232.5p.

The financial services veteran, who served as the company’s senior independent director between 2018 and 2022, made his latest move despite a £50,000 purchase on Tuesday being almost £10,000 under water.

Gilbert bought that stake at 285p, having seen Glencore shares fall by a fifth as one of the worst performing FTSE 100 stocks of the first quarter.

Any hopes that the new quarter might bring an upturn in fortunes were undone by the severe market reaction to Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff moves and retaliation by Beijing.

Glencore dived to 230.5p at one point on Friday as the price of copper, thermal coal and other key commodities in the company’s portfolio fell sharply on fears that tit-for-tat tariffs of 34% on China and US goods will derail demand.

The sell-off also depressed the value of three purchases made by Gilbert in 2024, when he dealt shares at prices between 408p and 487p.

Glencore was under pressure even before the trade turbulence after the cash-generative coal division was hit by a sustained fall in price dating back to October.

This dashed hopes that levels were near their trough and contributed to Glencore reporting a 16% fall in full-year earnings to $14.4 billion. China consumes about half the world’s coal.

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February’s results showed net debt higher at $11.1 billion while cash returns of $2.2 billion were slightly lower than the City expected, split between a base distribution of 10p a share and a new $1 billion buyback.

The company also said it is looking into whether London is the right home for its listing

UBS trimmed its price target to 480p but said the shares had re-rating potential: “Glencore is well positioned due to its commodity mix and robust free cash flow and it has catalysts with the US listing, coal closures and step up in cash returns.”

Deutsche Bank revised its price target to 450p from 480p in the wake of the results.

Big order for booze giant

An insider’s purchase of Diageo (LSE:DGE) shares fared better in the trade turmoil, with Wednesday’s £60,000 investment by corporate relations director Dan Mobley down by less than 2% over the remainder of last week.

The resilient showing came amid some relief over the extent of Trump’s liberation day tariffs.

The shares were already at levels last seen in 2017 after Diageo pulled medium-term sales guidance due to the uncertainty of potential levies on its tequila and Canadian whisky brands.

North America contributed 38% of Diageo’s sales in recent half-year results, with about 45% of its products for sale in the US coming from Mexico and Canada.

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However, UBS said last week that imports from these countries appeared to be exempt from tariffs under the 2020 USMCA trade agreement.

This leaves 20% tariffs on imports from Europe such as Cognac and Irish whiskey and the baseline 10% tariffs on UK products such as Scotch and gin.

The bank estimates that these would have a $94 million, or 2% impact on group earnings fully absorbed, or require an aggregate 2-4% price increase on the affected brands to fully offset. This compares with projections of 6% for Campari and 12% for Remy.

Mobley bought his shares at a price of 2,050p, which compares with Diageo’s position of more than 2,800p last May.

Backing a building boom

A 13% slide for housebuilder Vistry Group (LSE:VTY) in the FTSE 250 index on Friday dealt a blow to the value of the £500,000 investment made by its executive chair Greg Fitzgerald on Monday.

He backed the partnership-focused builder’s turnaround hopes by picking up shares at a price of 569p, which at the time represented a three-year low. They had been more than 1,300p in September, prior to the disclosure of cost forecasting errors in the South division.

The fallout from the issue recently caused Vistry to report a 35% slide in adjusted profits to £263.5 million, even though it achieved strong growth in completions and revenue in 2024. Net debt more than doubled to £180.7 million as Vistry put dividend payments on hold.

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Fitzgerald told investors that much work has been done to ensure the group has the right people, structure, systems and controls in place to move forward with confidence.

He added: “Our focus is now firmly on the future and executing our differentiated partnerships strategy. We are pleased to see the Government bring forward a further £2 billion of much-needed funding for affordable homes, and will be seeking to progress as quickly as possible with our partners to deliver quality new homes across the country.”

The shares closed on Friday at 511.2p, making the builder one of the worst performing stocks in a session when the FTSE 250 index lost 4.4% of its value. Peel Hunt has a price target of 715p.