When company insiders spend their own money on shares, it tends to be worth paying attention, especially when the market subsequently hands buyers a discount on that price.
That is precisely the situation facing investors in Informa (LSE: INF), the events and trade show giant, whose stock has slipped below the 860p level at which insiders were purchasing earlier this month.
The weakness stems from a combination of Middle Eastern instability and a meaningful downgrade to the company’s own growth targets for the year ahead.
Informa cut its 2026 revenue growth outlook roughly in half, reducing the forecast from 6% to around 3%, as conflict in the region disrupts its considerable operations there.
The company holds a 52% stake in inD, a joint venture with the Dubai World Trade Centre, giving it deep commercial roots across a part of the world now facing serious uncertainty.
Several high-profile events have already been affected, with Saudi Arabia pushing its “Davos in the Desert” conference back to 2027, while Informa itself moved Cityscape Global to January and shifted the Global Health Exhibition to an online format.
Crucially, however, none of these events have been permanently cancelled, a distinction that matters enormously when assessing the long-term revenue profile of the business.
Underlying trading also remains solid, with events revenue expanding 8% across the first nine months and double-digit earnings per share growth still expected despite the disruption.
The unit economics of the business further reinforce the bull case, with net capital expenditure running at just 3.1% of revenue in the first half and an adjusted operating margin of 26.6%.
For businesses in certain sectors, attendance at Informa’s leading trade shows is effectively non-negotiable, which gives the company genuine pricing power that few event operators can match.
That structural advantage stands in contrast to the more obvious ways investors might play elevated tensions in the region, such as buying oil majors or airlines, both of which carry significant complications.
Brent crude has climbed above $111 a barrel, pushing BP shares toward a ten-year high in price-to-book terms, a valuation that arguably prices in a great deal of optimism about the oil price outlook.
Airlines, meanwhile, face the double burden of surging fuel costs and inherently difficult business models characterised by high fixed costs, cyclical demand, and price-sensitive customers.
Against that backdrop, Informa’s temporary setbacks look more like a weather event than a structural deterioration, with a clear path to recovery once regional conditions stabilise.
The timing of that stabilisation is impossible to predict, but the underlying quality of the franchise, its margins, its pricing power, and its rescheduled rather than lost revenues, suggests the current share price may be undervaluing what remains a formidable business.