With HPQ at 7-year lows — this board member is backing up the truck

Big insider buying by a board member at Hewlett Packard (HPQ) came across SEC.gov via a Form 4 filing on 5/30/12.

Ralph V Whitworth is an activist investor who runs Relational Investors LLC and took his HP board seat back in November 2011. He / RI LLC owned 17 million shares then and has just upped the position to 29 million shares. This was 6–7% of the portfolio and should now be getting close to 11–12% of RI LLC holdings. Recent prices are right around the level where he started buying back in October.

The Bloomberg article linked above lists a series of pretty big moves coming out of prior board positions he has held at other companies. With a 14-person board I’m skeptical of anyone’s ability to drive change but this guy has a pretty impressive track record, so I’ll be watching.

What do you think? Is it time to buy HPQ?

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