Who Are AT & S Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik Aktiengesellschaft’s (VIE:ATS) Major Shareholders?

Will Harmon

Updated Mon, May 7, 2018, 12:26 AM

I am going to take a deep dive into AT & S Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik Aktiengesellschaft’s (WBAG:ATS) most recent ownership structure, not a frequent subject of discussion among individual investors. Ownership structure of a company has been found to affect share performance over time. Since the same amount of capital coming from an activist institution and a passive mutual fund has different implications on corporate governance, it is a useful exercise to deconstruct ATS’s shareholder registry.

Check out our latest analysis for AT & S Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik

Institutional Ownership

In ATS’s case, institutional ownership stands at 28.98%, significant enough to cause considerable price moves in the case of large institutional transactions, especially when there is a low level of public shares available on the market to trade. Although ATS has a high institutional ownership, such stock moves, in the short-term, are more commonly linked to a particular type of active institutional investors – hedge funds. In the case of ATS, investors need not worry about such volatility considering active hedge funds don’t have a significant stake. However, we should dig deeper into ATS’s ownership structure and find out how other key ownership classes can affect its investment profile.

Insider Ownership

Another important group of shareholders are company insiders. Insider ownership has to do more with how the company is managed and less to do with the direct impact of the magnitude of shares trading on the market. Although individuals in ATS hold only a 1.71% stake, it’s a good sign for shareholders as the company’s executives and directors have their incentives directly linked to the company’s performance. In addition to this, it may be interesting to look at insider buying and selling activities. Keep in mind that buying may be sign of upbeat future expectations, but selling doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite as the insiders might just be doing it out of their personal financial needs.

General Public Ownership

A big stake of 47.06% in ATS is held by the general public. This size of ownership gives retail investors collective power in deciding on major policy decisions such as executive compensation, appointment of directors and acquisitions of businesses. This level of ownership gives retail investors the power to sway key policy decisions such as board composition, executive compensation, and potential acquisitions. This is a positive sign for an investor who wants to be involved in key decision-making of the company.

Private Company Ownership

Another important group of owners for potential investors in ATS are private companies that hold a stake of 22.24% in ATS. These are companies that are mainly invested due to their strategic interests or are incentivized by reaping capital gains on investments their shareholdings. This kind of ownership, if predominantly strategic, can give these companies a significant power to affect ATS’s business strategy. Thus, potential investors should look into these business relations and check how it can impact long-term shareholder returns.

Next Steps:

ATS’s considerably high level of institutional ownership calls for further analysis into its margin of safety. This is to avoid getting trapped in a sustained sell-off that is often observed in stocks with this level of institutional participation. However, ownership structure should not be the only focus of your research when constructing an investment thesis around ATS. Rather, you should be looking at fundamental drivers such as AT & S Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik’s past track record and financial health. I highly recommend you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:

Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for ATS’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for ATS’s outlook.
Past Track Record: Has ATS been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of ATS’s historicals for more clarity.
Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.