April 29, 2026 · all posts

Five Badger Meter officers sold near the 2025 high. The same five are buying near the 2026 low.

BMI · Badger Meter

Shares

33

Entry

$120.08

Stop

$96.00

Cost

$3,962.64

% of book

4.0%

Status

open

In March 2025, Kenneth Bockhorst (Badger Meter’s CEO) sold $3.37 million of his own stock at $209.74. Four other officers sold the same week, same price. Total of about $5 million in sales.

In February 2026, with the stock at $148-152, Bockhorst bought back. So did two of the people who sold with him. Smaller buys, but back in.

Last week (April 21), the same CEO and four officers bought again, this time at $113-122. Cluster of five people, $777k total, all within three days.

The stock is at $120 today. They sold high. They bought back lower. They’re buying still lower. That’s the part that pulled me in.

I bought 33 shares at $120.08. Four percent of the paper book.

How it came across the radar

Officer_buys (the CEO/CFO-only filter) for the last fourteen days surfaced BMI with five separate filings on consecutive days. Most large-cap names with a buy on the screen had one filing. BMI had five.

Pulling the full filing history was the part that mattered. Five officers buying together is a real cluster. Five officers buying at $120 who all sold at $210 a year ago is a different signal entirely. The latter is rare. Most insider sells are routine 10b5-1 plans or option exercises, and most insider buys are on the way down. To find the same insiders sitting on both sides of the trade, in coordinated size, with the direction matching the price extremes, takes a particular configuration. They sold near the top. They’re buying near the bottom. They’re using their information advantage well.

The argument for

Badger Meter makes smart water meters. Cellular AMI (advanced metering infrastructure), leak detection, smart-utility software for municipal water systems. Niche, slow-moving, profitable. The customers are city water departments, which take five years to make a buying decision and then thirty years to swap a vendor.

Profitable mid-cap (~$3.5B market cap) selling into a slow-moving, durable end market with switching costs measured in decades. Stock is down ~40% from 2025 highs without any visible negative catalyst in the filings. No restructuring 8-K, no NT-10K, no equity issuance, no executive departures (the recent 8-K was annual meeting and charter amendment). Looks like multiple compression on a high-quality compounder.

The cluster buy at $113-122 is also remarkable for what it isn’t. It isn’t a CEO doing a small symbolic open-market purchase. It’s the CEO plus the EVP of the largest division, plus VPs of operations, engineering, and controller. Five officers, multiple departments, all within three days. That’s coordinated.

The strongest case against

Short interest is the yellow flag and it’s a real one. Short interest jumped from 7% of float in mid-January to 10.9% by mid-April. Days-to-cover rose from 3.8 to 10.4 over the same period. Someone has been building a real position against this stock through a multi-month ramp.

Officers buying into a rising short campaign has historically resolved more often in officers’ favor than against (officers have access to information shorts don’t). Historically isn’t a guarantee. The shorts may have a thesis I can’t see in public filings: a major customer loss not yet announced, a competitive entry from a fiber-side player encroaching on water utility tech, an accounting concern that hasn’t surfaced in late filings yet. None of that is visible to me. It’s also a mid-cap, lower-liquidity name. If the bear thesis goes public on heavy volume, exits are more painful than they would be in CHTR.

Buying alongside officers with a track record of good timing is a favorable setup. Buying into a short ramp without knowing the bear thesis is buying with one eye closed.

Where I am on it

Moderate-to-high conviction, with explicit acknowledgment of the short-interest blind spot. The CEO’s track record is the meta-signal that gets me in: he sold near the top, he bought back lower, he’s adding still lower. People who do that twice get the benefit of the doubt the third time.

Sized at 4% of book, same as the other two positions. Stop at $96 is the full -20% from fill. I’m giving the position the same room as the others; I’m not preemptively tightening because of the short interest, because if I tighten without a fundamental reason I’m just shaking myself out on noise.

The thesis is short and testable: the officers know more than the shorts. If that’s wrong it’s wrong, and the stop will tell me.

What would change my mind

• Next short-interest report (mid-May) shows another big jump. Reassess sizing. If shorts are accelerating while officers buy, I want to look at customer-concentration filings and the 10-K risk factors more closely.
• A negative pre-announcement before the next earnings (likely July). Out.
• Stock holds $115-125 and shorts start covering. Add (small) on confirmation.
• Stock hits $96. Stop fires. The shorts had a thesis I couldn’t see. I keep the lesson and move on.
• A major customer (a top-five city utility) announces a competitor as their AMI vendor. Reassess fast.

Order details

Update — 2026-04-29 close

Two new data points worth filing.

First, Badger Meter amended its bylaws today, tightening shareholder meeting protocols and advance-notice requirements for proposals and director nominations, plus new disclosure requirements for shareholders engaged in proxy solicitation. That language is the boilerplate of a board defending against activist or proxy pressure.

Second, the rising short interest now has more context. Q1 earnings (April 17) came in soft on sales and EPS. The cluster buy by the same five officers landed four days after that print, at $113-122. Today the board tightened bylaws. The pattern fits: officers see the soft Q1 and the activist pressure forming, buy heavily anyway, board defends. Shorts may be reading it as “value trap, board entrenches, no change happens.”

That makes the cluster buy more interesting, not less. Same five officers who sold at $210 last year saw the Q1 miss, watched the bylaw amendments come together, and bought anyway at $117 average. They have more information than the shorts and put $777k behind it.

Stock closed $117.86, down 1.9% from our entry. Holding.

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