Bob Simpson buys $5.6 million of TXO: Texas insider buying

Bob Simpson bought 400,000 TXO Partners units for about $5.64 million from Aug. 7 to 13. The Wilks family put about $4 million into ProFrac, and HF Sinclair CEO Franklin Myers bought $1.28 million of stock.

Bob Simpson spent about $5.6 million on TXO Partners units over five straight trading days, Aug. 7 through Aug. 13, and filed twice. He's chairman of the Fort Worth oil and gas partnership's general partner. We found nine open market buys of $30,000 or more by insiders and big holders of Texas companies in Form 4s filed on filings from Aug. 10 through Aug. 16, and his was the largest.

The Wilks family was the other big buyer. THRC Holdings bought about $3.62 million of ProFrac and Matthew Wilks added about $402,000, days after he took the combined chief executive and executive chairman job.

Prices are weighted averages from each filing. Dollar figures below are Lone Star Index calculations from those shares and prices, and every company's latest quarterly report lists a Texas address.

Simpson's run

The first filing covers 250,000 units bought Aug. 7, 10 and 11, and the second adds 25,000 on Aug. 12 and 125,000 on Aug. 13. Together that's $5.64 million, and he held 9,500,000 units directly at the end. Neither filing checks the preset trading plan box, and both describe him as chairman of TXO GP. TXO lists Fort Worth in its quarterly report filed Aug. 4.

The Wilks family and ProFrac

THRC Holdings, whose general partner's sole member is Dan Wilks, bought 517,669 ProFrac shares on Aug. 10 and 202,331 on Aug. 11, about $3.62 million, its Form 4 shows. Matthew Wilks, ProFrac's chief executive, bought 80,000 more at the same average prices through JCMWZ, LLC, about $402,000, per his filing. ProFrac's quarterly report lists Willow Park.

Our read

Simpson's buying carries weight because of his record and his price. He founded XTO Energy and was its chairman when it agreed in December 2009 to sell to ExxonMobil in an all stock deal valued at $41 billion including debt. He gave up TXO's chief executive job on April 1, 2025, and stayed on as chairman, the company said that March. TXO's quarterly report shows the board raised the quarterly distribution to $0.40 from $0.36 on Aug. 4, and that TXO sold about 13.4 million units at $15.00 in a May 2025 offering. Every weighted average price he paid in this run was below that. His 9.5 million directly held units come to about 17% of the 55.4 million outstanding on Aug. 4, by our math.

ProFrac is a different kind of signal. Matt Wilks took the combined chief executive and executive chairman job on Aug. 7, the earnings release says, and the family was buying by Aug. 10. That release shows about $72 million of liquidity against about $1.08 billion of net debt, while Wilks said the market for high spec fleets keeps tightening and price increases are layering in for the third quarter.

THRC's share count needs a caveat. Its Form 4 lists 87,500,195 shares after these buys, but the Schedule 13D amendment it filed the same day puts THRC at 81,343,143 common shares plus preferred convertible into 1,865,865 more, about 45% of the class. That filing also shows the Wilks group as a whole at about 83%. So the family already holds a big majority, and these buys don't change who's in charge. They mostly shrink a float that's already under a fifth of the stock, and that cuts both ways for outside holders.

Two energy chief executives

Myers paid about $1.28 million for his HF Sinclair shares on Aug. 11, his Form 4 shows, and held 194,841 afterward. That came nine days after REH Advisors sold a block of 2,375,000 shares back to the Dallas refiner at $89.41, so Myers paid about $4.11 a share less than the company paid REH. Part of that gap is the dividend, since the stock went ex dividend $0.525 the day he bought, per Yahoo Finance.

Matador's Joseph Foran, chairman and chief executive of the Dallas oil producer, bought on four straight days. His first filing shows 3,130 shares on Aug. 10 and 709 on Aug. 11, and the second adds 10,000 on Aug. 12 and 5,000 on Aug. 13, about $975,000 in all. Neither checks the preset trading plan box, and each trade has its own weighted average and price range. A footnote says his direct holdings, 30,617 shares at the end, include shares from the company's employee stock purchase plan, but it's attached to the holdings figure, not the purchases. Matador lists Dallas in its quarterly report.

The smaller names

The Empery buy was the second largest of the week at about $4.07 million, and all of it was fund money. Empery Asset Management's funds did the buying, and Lane, who runs the manager's general partner and is co chief executive of Empery Digital, held 100,000 shares directly, the filing shows. Empery Digital lists Pflugerville in its Aug. 7 quarterly report.

Beer's purchase at Irving based biote came to about $202,000 and more than doubled his direct stake, to 239,744 shares. SoftVest's buy of Cross Timbers units ran about $261,000. Friedrichsen's 7,500 shares of the Austin legal software company cost about $32,000. Below our cutoff, Citizens Inc. chief actuary Seth Hoxworth bought 5,376 shares at $3.83, about $20,600, per his filing.

What we left out

Stellex's $56.95 million purchase of Team Inc. shares, filed Aug. 10, was a negotiated deal with Corre funds and not an open market trade.

What to watch

• Aug. 21: TXO pays its $0.40 quarterly distribution to unitholders of record Aug. 14, per its Aug. 4 release.
• Sept. 2: HF Sinclair pays its $0.525 quarterly dividend to holders of record Aug. 11, the day Myers bought, per its July 28 release.

The full feed is on Insider Radar, and the Texas map shows where each of these companies is based.

Lone Star Index publishes research, not investment advice.