Taking stock: Florida investor adds to NHC stake

Also: Fidelity unloads BioMimetic, Pinnacle and LP bounce on upgrades

Email | Print By Geert De Lombaerde

A veteran Miami investor has snapped up almost 200,000 shares of National HealthCare Corp. in the last two months.

The purchases by Ira Sochet lifted his stake in the Murfreesboro nursing home operator (Ticker: NHC) to 9.5 percent from 8.0 percent. The former Drexel Burnham Lambert exec paid between $43 and $52 for more than 184,000 shares.

Sochet first popped up on NHC’s radar three years ago after he had lifted his stake in the company to more than 7 percent. He added to his holdings in the following two years but began taking some profits late last summer, selling more than 134,000 shares in the low $50s over the course of three months.

Sochet was out of the country and unavailable for comment. An employee at his firm, Sochet & Co., said the company doesn’t comment on its holdings, but the 70-year-old has in the past shown an activist streak.

In 2000, he made a hostile bid to buy an Illinois manufacturer in which he was a large shareholder. Five years prior, he had launched a proxy fight against the board of the company that has since morphed into Meritage Homes.

At about 11 a.m., NHC shares were up about 1.2 percent at $45.64. Year to date, they’re down about 12 percent.

Fidelity saying bye to Biomimetic

FMR LLC, the parent of mutual fund giant Fidelity, last quarter all but cashed out of BioMimetic Therapeutics, of which it owned more than 10 percent 15 months ago.

In a filing with the SEC, FMR said it now owns about 76,000 shares of Franklin-based BioMimetic (Ticker: BMTI). That’s down from 2 million in the spring of 2007 and 1.2 million just three months ago.

Shares of BioMimetic have spent the last quarter crawling out of the hole they were pushed in by a competitor’s bad regulatory news. At about 11 a.m. today, they were trading at $11.92, up 6 percent on the day. For the year, they’re down about 32 percent.

Pinnacle bounces on upgrade

A Janney Montgomery Scott upgrade from ‘neutral’ to ‘buy’ has lifted shares of Pinnacle Financial Partners almost 7 percent this morning.

Janney cited the recent 30-percent drop in shares of Pinnacle (Ticker: PNFP) as the main reason for its call. The slide has pushed the bank’s price-earnings ratio to around 11, leaving plenty of upside potential.

“We believe that Pinnacle has one of the best community bank management teams in the country operating in one of the nation’s most favorable markets,” the analysts said.

At about 11:15 a.m., Pinnacle was up 6.9 percent. So far in 2008, the stock is down some 16 percent and is now at levels last seen four years ago.

RBC upgrades LP

Shares of Louisiana-Pacific got a boost Monday from RBC Capital Markets, which upgraded the company to ‘sector perform.’

The Nashville-based construction materials supplier (Ticker: LPX) ended Monday trading at $8.04, up more than 5 percent but were off about 2 percent Tuesday morning.

That said, RBC analysts aren’t exactly stepping out on a limb with their upgrade: LP shares have fallen from almost $16 late last year and more than $28 in the spring of 2006.