Should You Be Concerned About Threat Protect Australia Limited’s (ASX:TPS) Shareholders?

Ingrid Hart

Updated Thu, May 31, 2018, 8:22 PM

Today, I will be analyzing Threat Protect Australia Limited’s (ASX:TPS) recent ownership structure, an important but not-so-popular subject among individual investors. When it comes to ownership structure of a company, the impact has been observed in both the long-and short-term performance of shares. 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 TPS’s shareholder registry.

See our latest analysis for Threat Protect Australia

Institutional Ownership

With an institutional ownership of 10.60%, TPS can face volatile stock price movements if institutions execute block trades on the open market, more so, when there are relatively small amounts of shares available on the market to trade However, as not all institutions are alike, such high volatility events, especially in the short-term, have been more frequently linked to active market participants like hedge funds. In the case of TPS, investors need not worry about such volatility considering active hedge funds don’t have a significant stake. However, we should dig deeper into TPS’s ownership structure and find out how other key ownership classes can affect its investment profile.

Insider Ownership

I find insiders are another important group of stakeholders, who are directly involved in making key decisions related to the use of capital. In essence, insider ownership is more about the alignment of shareholders’ interests with the management. 26.62% ownership of TPS insiders is large enough to make an impact on shareholder returns. In general, this level of insider ownership has negatively affected underperforming (consistently low PE ratio) companies and positively affected the companies that outperform (consistently high PE ratio). It may be interesting to take a look at what company insiders have been doing with their holdings lately. Insiders buying company shares can be a positive indicator of future performance, but a selling decision can simply be driven by personal financial needs.

General Public Ownership

A big stake of 44.63% in TPS 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 group of owners that a potential investor in TPS should consider are private companies, with a stake of 18.16%. While they invest more often due to strategic interests, an investment can also be driven by capital gains through share price appreciation. With this size of ownership in TPS, this ownership class can affect the company’s business strategy. As a result, potential investors should further explore the company’s business relations with these companies and find out if they can affect shareholder returns in the long-term.

Next Steps:

TPS’s considerably high level of institutional ownership calls for further analysis into its margin of safety. This will allow investors to reduce the impact of non-fundamental factors, such as volatile block trading impact on their portfolio value. However, ownership structure should not be the only focus of your research when constructing an investment thesis around TPS. Rather, you should be looking at fundamental drivers such as Threat Protect Australia’s past track record and financial health. I urge you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:

Financial Health: Is TPS’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here.
Valuation: What is TPS worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether TPS is currently mispriced by the market.
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.