CEO Ups Stake in Atlantic Power Corporation

Don’t look now, but Atlantic Power Corporation (NYSE:AT) CEO James Moore has taken his stake in his company from 0 to more than 100,000 shares — in 16 days flat.

That’s the surprising revelation from Thursday’s Form 4 filing at the SEC, which showed Moore making 82,000 shares’ worth of purchases on Thursday, at prices ranging from $3.05 all the way up through $3.14 per share. (Atlantic Power shares currently trade for $3).

Prior to this spending spree, our insider trading data show that Moore actually began buying shares back on May 12, buying 18,253 shares at $3.01 apiece. Prior to that date, contains no data on Moore ever buying a share. Overall, however, insiders have been heavy buyers of Atlantic Power stock, with purchases outweighing sales by 209,910 shares over the past year.

What does it mean to you?
A small-cap electric utility based in Boston, Yahoo! Finance describes Atlantic Power as operating power generation assets in the U.S. and Canada totally 2,945 megawatts of electric generation capacity as of the end of last year. The company also has “green energy” exposure in the form of a 300-megawatt wind farm in Oklahoma, and a 53-megawatt biomass project in Georgia.

That all sounds substantial, but for investors (the CEO included), Atlantic Power still remains a risky proposition. Unprofitable despite generating $555 million in annual revenues, the company is deeply in debt, with $1.45 billion in total debt on its balance sheet, against only $100 million in cash.

Revenues were down 11% last year, as well.

On the plus side, Atlantic Power does pay a dividend — 2.5% annually. So after anteing up more than $300,000 for his shares, Moore can at least take comfort in the fact that he’ll receive $2,500 in dividends for them.

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