Former portfolio manager at First Eagle Funds, Jean-Marie Eveillard (Trades, Portfolio), increased his stake in Durect Corp (DRRX, Financial) on March 9 by more than 22%, according to GuruFocus’ Real Time Picks.
The French-born investor managed First Eagle’s Global, Overseas, Gold, U.S. Value and Overseas Variables funds but now serves as the firm’s adviser after stepping down from active portfolio management.
Eveillard has held Durect in his portfolio since Q1 2012 after selling out of his previous holding in Q4 2010. He bought back in when the price plummeted to about its current level. The graph below shows his historical holding in the stock.
He increased his holding in Durect by 22.62%, purchasing the shares at $1.70 per share. Over the past year, the stock has increased 18% and currently trades at $1.78.
Durect is a specialty pharmaceutical company that uses advanced enabling drug delivery technologies to develop improved pharmaceutical products. Its system combines known drugs with proven systems to get drugs quickly to market and lower development risk.
The company had one profitable year in 2012 when net income was $16.2 million. In Q4 2014, the company reported a loss of $5.94 million, on par with the loss of $5.1 million in the year-ago quarter.
However, one good sign is that insiders have consistently been buying shares. Most recently, 10% owner 21 April Fund Ltd purchased 1,668,800 shares on March 16. Before that, Director Simon Benito bought 40,000 shares on March 10. Peter Lynch has written in his book One Up On Wall Street that, while insiders may sell shares for a variety of reasons, they only buy when they believe the price will increase.
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