Companies: ABU    BPK    EPI    IEN    LPA    MDY    XAR   

The market as a whole may not be going one way or another, but there remain plenty of directors of small caps out there who reckon that risking a few bob on their companies is well worth the effort.

Excellent interventions

The prize for the most opportunistic intervention in the past month or so goes to InterX executives Phil Sant and, especially, financial director Simon Mieseques. The latter managed to pick up 250,000 shares at 6p on the day of interim results on 12 February, since when they have recovered to 30p. Sant bought 200,000 at 8.5p the next day.

The company had seen its shares plunge following a profit warning a few days before, but the realisation that it is trying to save its cash reserves and the confidence of Mieseques and Sant (who have made short-term profits of £60,000 and £43,000), has seen the shares soaring up again.

Two directors of e-learning group Epic have made some decent gains as well. Chairman Michael Inwards and fellow non-executive Professor Ian Ritchie both bought up 30,000 shares at 62p on 11 February and have seen their investments move up to 77p since then. These actions followed an interim results statement in which the company reported profits more than halved to £205,000 in the first half to 30 November but with an optimistic tenor due to a stable order book and strong balance sheet.

Healthy signs

Sir John Chisholm, the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency's chief executive, showed his faith in drug delivery firm Bespak, a company for which he is a board non-executive, with a £55,700 purchase of 10,000 at £5.57 per share, a not inconsiderable sum even for the more wealthy of individuals. But that figure was dwarfed by the amount shelled out by self-storage firm Big Yellow's chairman David White, who recently doubled his stake in the company with a 100,000 share purchase at 105p.

Over in medical equipment, Medisys non-executive David Robbins bought 20,000 of the company's shares at 85.5p, about a week before it announced that its 'Dart' blood glucose monitoring system has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and been cleared for marketing. The shares have edged back to 82p though.

Meanwhile at livestock auctioneer UA both non-executive the Earl of Lindsay and marketing director David Leggat acted to pick up exactly 1,000 shares at £3 apiece on 13 February. Michael Warriner, the R&D director of financial services e-business firm Intelligent Environments, will be hoping that his research was thorough and that the 125,000 shares bought at 4p will develop rather differently in the future from what they have done so far: they are down at 3.75p.

Going even further down, into the world of the below-a-penny shares, thebiz.com non-executive Nicholas Watkins bought 530,000 shares at 0.75p, following financial director Guy van Swanenburg's 800,000 share purchase at 0.69p a few days previously. They have since moved ahead to 1.25p.

Electronics action

Electronics and electrical equipment has been out of sorts and out of many people's minds for some time, but a recent spate of director buying might indicate a possible return of confidence to the sector. LPA's finance director Stephen Brett bought 10,000 shares at 26p.

Component distributor Abacus's financial director Peter Griffiths-Jones has been busy buying up shares, picking up a total of 62,000 new shares in two slugs at 250p and then 255p on 25 January and 11 February, moving his stake to 1.78 million. Non-executive board colleague and former Lex Electronics director Gary Kibblewhite joined the party a week later, buying 5,500 shares at 268p to more than double his own smaller holding.

Xaar deputy chairman Richard King has also been in a buying frame of mind, picking up 40,000 shares at 69p on the day of the company's final results. The inkjet printing technology firm's pre-tax profits were slashed from £2.7 million to £1.6 million during the year, excluding the £1 million exceptional cost that had been borne from moving manufacturing from Cambridge to Sweden.

Selling out

Despite the preponderance of share buys over sells, the odd director out there is still deciding to plump for cash in hand, including Pendragon's corporate services director. Meanwhile at SurfControl, chief executive Steve Purdham, chairman Rob Barrow and colleague Kevin Blakeman have all cashed in chips. Purdham and Barrow's sales amounted to £1.7 million.