The leadership of Rural Funds Group (ASX: RFF) were true to their word and invested heavily into Rural Funds shares yesterday.
Rural Funds Group is a real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns farms and leases them to tenants. Started in 1997, Rural Funds Management now manages $1.2 billion in agricultural assets across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.
Insider Buying Of Rural Funds Shares
If you’ve been following along with the story you’ll know that earlier this week Rural Funds Management was accused by short seller Bonitas Research of doing some dodgy accounting and taking advantage of Rural Funds shareholders.
The Rural Funds share price plunged 40% and then went into a trading halt. But then Rural Funds came out with a defence and said Bonitas was wrong about its fraud allegations, although there was an error in one of the notes that didn’t affect and wasn’t connected to the main accounts.
The defence and the commitment by Rural Funds management to buy shares was enough to send the share price 40% higher again (although it hasn’t quite recovered yet).
This morning we got to see how much the leadership actually bought.
RFM Managing Director Mr David Bryant bought 292,500 units/shares at a price of $1.7091 per unit, meaning he invested around $500,000 in new shares. He now owns 14,707,354 shares which are now worth $28.7 million.
RFM non-Executive Chairman Mr Guy Paynter, between his two indirect holdings, bought 150,000 units at $1.6995 per unit ($254,925) and 250,000 units at $1.7749 per unit ($443,725) for a total cost of $698,650. He now owns $2.845 million of Rural Funds shares.
Mr Mike Carroll also spent almost $30,000 on Rural Funds shares on the market.
Is Everything Okay Now?
I think it may still be too early to say everything is in the clear until we get to see the EY report on the allegations, which is a few weeks away. But it does seem as though the market is siding with Rural Funds on these issues.
The reliable shares in the free report below could be safer options until the EY report is released.
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Disclosure: Jaz owns shares of Rural Funds at the time of writing, but this could change at any time.
