Insider: Aviva chief among FTSE 100 director deals

Aviva (LSE:AV.) boss Amanda Blanc has followed this month’s £160,000 purchase of the insurer’s shares by disclosing a big investment in support of BP (LSE:BP.), where she is senior independent director.

Friday’s £100,000 purchase was struck at 425.7p, having seen shares rally from April’s 332p.

Her previous purchase of BP stock took place shortly after she joined the board in 2022, with that investment worth £103,000 at a price of 438.9p.

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As we disclosed earlier this month, Blanc and her husband Ken recently bought Aviva shares at a price of 623p. That investment has already generated a paper profit after shares this week returned to near their two-decade high at 675p.

Elsewhere in the FTSE 100, non-executive directors at Next (LSE:NXT), easyJet (LSE:EZJ) and Barratt Redrow (LSE:BTRW) have tied their own money to the fortunes of their respective companies.

Former Hargreaves Lansdown finance director Amy Stirling spent £55,000 on a Next stake, having seen shares come under pressure in the wake of Thursday’s annual results.

Stirling, who joined the board last year, made her investment at 11,633p. Shares later recovered to close the week at 11,870p, leaving Next more than 20% higher this year.

At easyJet, senior independent director Sue Clark spent £35,250 with the airline’s shares trading near their lowest level since April’s tariffs-led sell-off. The dealings by the former SABMiller executive, who joined the board in March 2023, took place at a price of 459p.

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A post-results purchase of Barratt Redrow shares was made by Katie Bickerstaffe on Thursday. The £19,000 move by the former Marks & Spencer co-chief executive was at a price of 374.3p, which compares with the 482p seen as recently as June.

The housebuilder recorded a bigger-than-expected 27% rise in pre-tax profits to £592 million but shares were held back by pre-Budget tax rise uncertainty.

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Trustpilot Group (LSE:TRST) share dealings at prices similar to where the tech company traded prior to a year-long run of earnings upgrades have been declared by chair Zillah Byng-Thorne.

The purchases worth £100,000 were made last week at levels between 212p and 215p after the consumer reviews platform upgraded full-year margin guidance - the fifth time in a row it has boosted earnings expectations since annual results in September 2024.

Despite the strong run, shares are down by more than a fifth so far in 2025 and are flat over the past year. Byng-Thorne, who was appointed chair in April 2023 after a decade in charge of Future, made previous purchases in March at 248p and November last year at 251p.

UBS, which has a price target of 400p, believes the market has overlooked Trustpilot due to a high price/earnings (PE) multiple. It sees enterprise value/gross profit as the more appropriate metric, where the company still trades about 40% below peers.

The bank said: “We continue to see Trustpilot as a market leader with a defensible brand, a proven profitability model, and a valuation that does not yet reflect its improved financial profile.”

Adjusted earnings in Tuesday’s half-year results came in ahead of expectations at $18 million as operating leverage drove a four percentage-point increase in the margin to 14.6%.

Trustpilot expects a similar full-year margin performance, having signalled a rate of 14% in July’s trading update. It continues to forecast high-teens constant currency revenue growth, which follows a 17% half-year rise for its leading indicator of bookings.

Enterprise customer wins have included Boots, Barclays and Vimeo, while innovations such as AI review summaries and semantic search have advanced how consumers experience Trustpilot.

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Peel Hunt said that bookings continue to grow well and that it sees potential for further outperformance, especially in profitability. The broker has a price target of 380p, while Berenberg is at 300p after last week lifting its earnings estimates for 2025-27 by 9%.

Panmure Liberum said the results contained more good news than bad but that it still rates the stock as a marginal Sell.

It said questions remain over the long-term Enterprise strategy while it is also concerned about near-term bookings momentum. The broker added that the departure of long-serving finance chief Hanno Damm was a negative for both the business and the stock.

Trustpilot was worth £1.1 billion when shares were priced at 265p in the March 2021 IPO before hitting a high of 481.8p a few months later. They fell as far as 65p in summer 2023. The Copenhagen-based business has 60 million monthly active users across the world.