CRH and Airtel Africa: Big director share deals this week

No one knows a company quite as well as its directors, which is why it is worth keeping an eye on their buying and selling of shares. 

We have combed through UK directors' deals and published the purchases and sales that caught our eye. Our table is compiled using company announcements and is not exhaustive.

Find out which company shares are being bought by their own directors this week and keep an eye on those which are being sold. 

CRH director buys the dip

CRH (CRH) has fared well since shifting its primary listing from London to the New York Stock Exchange.

The company’s shares rose 37 per cent in 2024 and have gained 70 per cent since their switch in September 2023. During that time, the Dublin-headquartered building materials giant has been busy on the transactions front – spending $4.6bn (£3.7bn) in the first nine months of 2024 on acquisitions, and completing the $1.1bn disposal of its European lime operations to SigmaRoc (SRC).

The net effect of this is that although total revenue only edged up by 2 per cent in the third quarter, operating profit rose by 12 per cent despite a challenging market in which it faced weather disruptions on both sides of the Atlantic.

At the results announcement in November, chief executive Albert Manifold said “positive pricing momentum” and decent levels of underlying demand meant the company expected to achieve another year of double-digit growth in adjusted cash profit of $6.9bn-$7bn.

The US market, where CRH generates about two-thirds of its sales and three-quarters of its cash profit, is benefiting from strong levels of demand. Infrastructure, which comprises 40 per cent of US sales, is enjoying the “continued rollout of once-in-a-generation” levels of state and federal funding.

Chief financial officer Jim Mintern argued that this was unlikely to change under the new Trump administration, given bipartisan support for these measures. Yet the risk that some programmes could be cut or delayed, coupled with the increase in CRH’s debt due to acquisitions, have led to some investors viewing the shares as a riskier prospect.

An increase in short positions in December meant the shares fell by 8 per cent in December, which non-executive Richard Fearon viewed as a buying opportunity. He spent $942,200 on the shares on Christmas Eve. MF