In This Article:
Key Insights
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The considerable ownership by retail investors in SGS indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
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The top 25 shareholders own 45% of the company
Every investor in SGS SA (VTX:SGSN) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. We can see that retail investors own the lion's share in the company with 48% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.
While institutions, who own 33% shares weren’t spared from last week’s CHF479m market cap drop, retail investors as a group suffered the maximum losses
In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of SGS.
See our latest analysis for SGS
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About SGS?
Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.
As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in SGS. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of SGS, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.
We note that hedge funds don't have a meaningful investment in SGS. Groupe Bruxelles Lambert SA is currently the company's largest shareholder with 19% of shares outstanding. With 5.2% and 3.0% of the shares outstanding respectively, BlackRock, Inc. and The Vanguard Group, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders.
On studying our ownership data, we found that 25 of the top shareholders collectively own less than 50% of the share register, implying that no single individual has a majority interest.
While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.
Insider Ownership Of SGS
While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.