On Wednesday evening, the CEO of small cap energy producer Pedevco (US:PED), Simon Kukes filed his latest form 4 disclosing the purchase of 107,099 shares on market. The filing is only one of four filings submitted to the SEC in the second half of September. The transaction was initially spotted on Fintel’s latest CEO purchases page, later on Wednesday evening.

PED’s stock price slipped -3.77% on Thursday following the news.

In total, Kukes acquired 497,366 shares in four transactions from September 19th to 27th. The average price paid for these shares was $1.00 per share. This transaction boosted Kukes direct holding in the company to ~5.6%.

In addition to Simon’s direct position, his spouse owns a further 3,000 shares while his personal investment company SK Energy LLC owns a whopping 51.8 million shares.

The CEO now has firm control of ~66.2% of the shares, based on the 85.55 million shares outstanding according to Fintel’s ownership analysis of Pedevco.

SImon Kukes has been gradually accumulating Pedevco shares over time as the stock continues to trade at a deepening discount to sector peers. PED’s stock price is trading -9.7% lower year to date compared to many oil & gas producing peers that have more than doubled since the beginning of 2022.

Fintel’s insider accumulation score is bullish on PED with its score of 86.10. The score uses a combination of net number of insiders transacting, with the total shares bought and owned as a percentage of float, to rank stocks. PED ranks in the top 2.5% of 14,578 screened companies.

PED achieved this rank, despite having one net insider selling over the past 90 days. The net one insider selling is due to two company directors selling while CEO Kukes has been buying.

The first of these sales occurred by Board director Ivar Siem who sold 30,000 shares at $1.09 per share on the 12th of July. Siem owns 125,000 shares post sale.

The second sale occurred on the same day by Chairman John Scelfo who disposed of 40,000 shares at $1.09 per share. Scelfo owns 164,500 shares following the transaction.

These sales were minor when comparing them to the strength of the purchases made by Pedevco’s CEO.

Pedevco last provided a financial update to investors on the 15th of August when they released second quarter results to the market.

For the second quarter, PED produced 1,085 BOEPD (barrels of oil equivalent per day) which generated sales growth of 155% over the year to $9.55 million.

Additionally, the company generated a positive net income of $3.2 million (or 4 cents per share) compared to a loss of -$0.2 million in the prior year.

Crude oil and liquids amounted to 89% of total production in the second quarter.

On the future outlook of the company, the firms president Douglas Schick stated “we plan to leverage our ~$25 million of cash and zero debt as we evaluate additional drilling and growth opportunities in our Permian Basin and D-J Basin assets, in effort to grow production, revenue and profit for shareholders”

A chart from Fintel’s financial metrics and ratios page for PED shows the growth in revenue and profitability that has occurred over the last 3 years.

Analyst Ben Piggot from EF Hutton recently highlighted that the risk/reward trade off in shares of PED remains compelling at current prices as the stock has materially lagged the sector despite delivering strong operating results. The firm sees production growing by around 175% by the end of the year from current levels and hence remains ‘buy’ rated on the stock with their $2.40 price target.

Elsewhere John White from Roth Capital Partners remained upbeat on the company following the second quarter update with a ‘buy’ call on the stock reiterated with a $2.15 target price.

This article originally appeared on Fintel

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