Directors’ Dealings by Ben Jaglom

Action continues with directors taking stakes in the company behind Frankie & Benny’s and a waste-to-zinc concern

At technology group Elektron, finance director Geoff Spink offloaded 175,000 shares at a price of 41.25p a share, netting the board member a total of £72,188. Elektron, who note that Spink has ‘informed the board of his intention to leave the company later in the year’ recently unveiled a strong set of results for the year to January, in which it reported profits of £5.1 million (2010: £1.6 million) on sales up 67.2 per cent to £50 million. The AIM-quoted concern, which produces technology for ambulances and police cars, recently declared that it would be changing its name to Elektron Technology.

There was also a big sell-off at software giant Computacenter. The Hadley trust, a charitable foundation whose trustee Philip Hulme is a non-executive director at Computacenter, sold 200,000 shares at a price of 448p, earning the trust £950,000. This follows on from a previous sale of 721,270 shares earlier in the month, with the two combined sales generating a total of £4.3 million for the charity. This April Computacenter issued a bullish trading update in which it enthused that it had experienced a 2 per cent rise in sales in the first quarter on the back of a strong German market.

Over at broadband-by-satellite operator Avanti Communications, chairman John Brackenbury swooped into the market to purchase 13,111 shares at 420p a share, in a purchase worth £55,066. It has been an exciting period of late for Avanti following the launch of their Hylas-1 satellite last year. Shares in the company reached a high of 735p following the satellite launch, but since then the price has fallen out of orbit, having lost almost half its value since. Avanti is currently focused on launching a second satellite to focus on Africa and Middle East, with the company planning on bringing its services to provide broadband to both Afghanistan and Iraq.

At Restaurant Group – Frankie & Benny’s owner – non-executive director Simon Cloke bought 7,000 shares in a deal worth a total of £21,487. The Dresdner veteran has served on the board of the company for over a year. Restaurant Group, which also operates the Mexican restaurant Chiquito brand, has defied naysayers since the start of the recession, increasing its profits and sales since 2007 when many were expecting financially challenged customers might cut back on eating out. It recently declared that in trading for the first eighteen weeks of the year sales were up 5.5 per cent on the previous year.

A bout of buying took place at zinc-from-waste specialist ZincOx Resources. The AIM-quoted venture reported that members of the family of chairman Andrew Woollett purchased 187,662 shares, finance director Simon Hall acquired 10,000 shares while non-executive director Gautam Dalal bought 100,000, subsequently giving 25,000 to his adult son. The purchase came the day after ZincOx announced that it was close to beginning production at its Korean recycling project, which sees the company turning steel mill waste into zinc concentrate. Together the board members bought 297,662 shares, spending a total of £158,761.

Finally there was also some activity at purchasing and business services outfit Office2Office. CEO Simon Moate, a veteran of a number of blue-chips including Coca-Cola bought 20,000 shares at a price of 126p in his SIPP (self invested pension plan) a purchase worth £25,200.

The Norwich-headquartered company recently declared that it has signed a four-year deal with business supplier Advantia worth £25 million a year. It came on the same day as a trading update in which Office2Office noted that trading for its first half was in line with management’s expectations.