Insiders Are Selling Autodesk

In this article, I will feature one tech stock that has seen intensive insider selling during the last 30 days. Intensive insider selling can be defined by the following three criteria:

The stock was sold by three or more insiders within one month. The stock was not purchased by any insiders in the month of intensive selling. At least two sellers decreased their holdings by more than 10%.

Autodesk (ADSK) operates as a design software and services company worldwide. Its Platform Solutions and Emerging Business segment offers AutoCAD software.

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Insider selling during the last 30 days

Here is a table of Autodesk's insider-trading activity during the last 30 days by insider.

Name	Title	Trade Date	Shares Sold	Rule 10b5-1	Current Ownership	Decrease In Ownership
Hallam Dawson	Director	Oct 3-4	40,000	No	76,564 shares	34.3%
Kris Halvorsen	Director	Oct 3-4	29,203	No	22,562 shares	56.4%
Jan Becker	SVP	Sep 26-Oct 2	75,000	Yes	80,898 shares + 26,611 options	41.1%
Pascal Di Fronzo	SVP	Sep 30	423	Yes	34,385 shares	1.2%
Carl Bass	CEO	Sep 26	400,000	Yes	372,808 shares	51.8%
Crawford Beveridge	Director	Sep 16	7,000	Yes	39,473 shares + 15,000 options	11.4%

There have been 551,626 shares sold by insiders during the last 30 days. More details ab! out the Rule 10b5-1 trading plan can be found from this link.

Insider selling by calendar month

Here is a table of Autodesk's insider-trading activity by calendar month.

Month	Insider selling / shares	Insider buying / shares
October 2013	129,203	0
September 2013	422,423	0
August 2013	32,104	0
July 2013	20,482	0
June 2013	4,000	0
May 2013	37,500	0
April 2013	275,000	0
March 2013	110,451	0
February 2013	0	0
January 2013	50,458	0

There have been 1,081,621 shares sold and there have been zero shares purchased by insiders this year. The month of September has seen the most insider selling.

Financials

Autodesk reported the fiscal 2014 second-quarter, which ended July 31, financial results on August 22 with the following highlights:

Revenue	$561.7 million
Net income	$61.7 million
Cash	$2.4 billion
Debt	$0.7 billion

Outlook

Autodesk's guidance for the fiscal 2014 third quarter, ending October 31, is as follows:

Revenue	$540-$555 million
EPS GAAP	$0.19-$0.23
EPS Non-GAAP	$0.36-$0.40

Competition

Autodesk's competitors include Adobe Systems (ADBE), Dassault Systemes SA (DASTY.PK), and Parametric Tec! hnology C! orporation (PMTC). Here is a table comparing these companies.

Company ADSK ADBE DASTY PMTC Industry Average (Technical & System Software) Market Cap: Employees: Qtrly Rev Growth (yoy): Revenue: Gross Margin: EBITDA: Operating Margin: Net Income: EPS: P/E: PEG (5 yr expected): P/S: 9.14B 26.28B 14.10B 3.34B 125.72M 7,300 11,144 9,522 5,987 413.00 -0.01 -0.08 0.04 0.01 0.18 2.29B 4.17B 2.68B 1.27B 69.26M 0.89 0.86 0.87 0.71 0.44 464.80M 970.08M 831.45M 252.92M 3.89M 0.14 0.16 0.24 0.14 0.06 221.20M 447.00M 431.35M 3.32M N/A 0.96 0.88 3.40 0.03 0.02 42.76 60.15 33.19 1,001.07 19.68 3.06 3.34 N/A 1.00 1.43 4.00 6.31 5.46 2.65 1.40

Autodesk has the second lowest P/S ratio among these four companies.

Here is a table of these competitors' insider-trading activities this year.

Company	Insider buying / shares	Insider selling / shares
ADBE	5,000	2,564,483
PMTC	0	372,853

Adobe Systems has also seen intensive insider selling during the past 30 days.

Conclusion

There have been ! six diffe! rent insiders selling Autodesk and there have not been any insiders buying Autodesk during the past 30 days. Five of these six insiders decreased their holdings by more than 10%. Autodesk has an insider ownership of 0.30%.

Autodesk is trading at a P/E ratio of 42.76 and a forward P/E ratio of 25.14. The company has a book value of $9.19 per share.

Before entering short Autodesk, I would like to get a bearish confirmation from the Point and Figure chart. The main reason for the proposed short entry is the intensive insider selling activity.

Source: Insiders Are Selling Autodesk

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More...)