(NYSE:WTW) are bullish on the company’s shares, with Denis Kelly, Director at Weight Watchers Inc., purchasing 1,000 shares of the company on May 12, 2015. Invus Group, manager of the Luxembourg-based Artal Group that owns 51.49% of Weight Watchers, similarly did not immediately respond to a message about a potential deal offer.
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Weight Watchers shares leapt 28% to 5.23 in premarket trading on the stock market today. Company shares. In the past six months, there is a change of 0% in the total insider ownership. Institutional Investors own 97.7% of Company shares.
Analysts point out that Weight Watchers has been very slow to react to changes in the weight-loss market such as Fitbit and Apple Inc. The information was disclosed with the SEC in a Form 4 Filing. Option exercises are not covered.
The hedge fund has reportedly bought Weight Watchers loans, due for repayment in April next year, and is now talking to potential partners about a possible joint bid. Post opening the session at $4.81, the shares hit an intraday low of $4.65 and an intraday high of $4.85 and the price vacillated in this range throughout the day.
It paid $224 million for the company in 1999, and over the next 13 years had pocketed $3.8 billion in cash, Forbes reported in 2012.
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The takeover rumors are likely to push the shares even higher over the next few days. The 52-week high of Weight Watchers global Inc (NYSE:WTW) is $29.84 and the 52-week low is $4.055. However, it might take some efforts to convince the current majority stockowner of Weight Watchers worldwide, Inc. Through WeightWatchers.com, the Company offers Internet subscription weight management products to consumers and maintains an interactive presence on the Internet for the Weight Watchers brand. Moreover, since the beginning of forward testing from August 2012, the strategy worked just as our research predicted, outperforming the market every year and returning 135% over the last 34 months, which is more than 80 percentage points higher than the returns of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (see more details).
