Insider Buys Of The Week: Cott, Hain Celestial, Kinder Morgan

• Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors.
• An executive chair continuing making "very extreme" purchases in the past week.
• Insiders at a couple of beverage-focused companies made notable buys as well.

Conventional wisdom says insiders and 10 percent owners really only buy shares of a company for one reason -- they believe the stock price will rise and they want to profit from it. So insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors, particularly during periods of uncertainty.

Here's a look at a few notable insider purchases reported in the past week.

Hain Celestial

Hain Celestial Group Inc HAIN saw a director make a couple of notable share purchases this past week. At $19.17 to $19.42 apiece, the total of about a million shares acquired totaled nearly $19.38 million. His stake was listed as more than 2.3 million shares, compared with more than 106 million of them outstanding.

This maker of organic and natural products has seen both an upgrade and a downgrade from analysts in recent days. Shares ended most recently at $19.25, still within the above purchase price range despite a 9 percent pop in the past week. The consensus price target is $20.27, but shares have traded as high as $36.15 each in the past 52 weeks.

See Also: From The Ground Floor To GROUNDFLOOR—How Brian Dally Discovered He Could Be A Founder

Kinder Morgan

The Kinder Morgan Inc KMI executive chair of the board, Richard Kinder, picked up more than 900,000 additional shares of this Houston-based energy infrastructure giant. At prices that ranged from $19.15 to $19.36 a share, last week's transactions totaled more than $17.35 million.

Barron's recently had a few thoughts on what the "very extreme" insider buying at Kinder Morgan may mean. The stock has rallied over 28 percent year to date and closed last week at $19.74, above Kinder's latest purchase price range. The stock has traded between $14.62 and $19.74 in the past 52 weeks, but analysts on average anticipate that the price will go as high as $21.37.

Cott

Cott Corporation COT saw CEO Thomas Harrington, another executive and a director all step up to the buy window midweek. At prices that ranged from $14.55 to $15.10 apiece, the more than 98,000 shares reportedly acquired cost them over $1.46 million. Note that Harrington's stake was listed as up to more than 125,000 shares.

After this Canada-based beverage and foodservice company reported mixed quarterly results back in February, the share price pulled back sharply. It has yet to fully recover and ended last week at $15.04 per share. The shares have traded as high as $17.06 in the past year, but the consensus price target was $18.45 on last look.