I am going to take a deep dive into China HGS Real Estate Inc’s (NASDAQ:HGSH) most recent ownership structure, not a frequent subject of discussion 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 HGSH’s shareholder registry. All data provided is as of the most recent financial year end.

View our latest analysis for China HGS Real Estate

Institutional Ownership

Institutional investors are one of the largest group of market participants and their buy-sell decisions on a company’s stock can significantly impact prices, more so, when there are relatively small amounts of shares available on the market to trade. HGSH hardly has any institutional ownership, leaving investors little to think about sharp price volatility in the stock that could take place due to institutional trading.

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. HGSH insiders hold a significant stake of 69.88% in the company. This level of insider ownership has been found to have a negative impact on companies with consistently low PE ratios (underperformers), while it has been positive in the case of high PE ratio firms (outperformers). It may be interesting to take a look at what company insiders have been doing with their holdings lately. Insider buying may be a sign of upbeat future expectations, however, selling doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite as insiders may be motivated by their personal financial needs.

General Public Ownership

A big stake of 30.05% in HGSH is held by the general public. With this size of ownership, retail investors can collectively play a role in major company policies that affect shareholders returns, including executive remuneration and the appointment of directors. They can also exercise the power to decline an acquisition or merger that may not improve profitability.

What this means for you:

With a low level of institutional ownership, investors in HGSH need not worry about non-fundamental factors such as ownership structure causing large impact on stock prices. However, if you are building an investment case for HGSH, ownership structure alone should not dictate your decision to buy or sell the stock. Instead, you should be evaluating company-specific factors such as China HGS Real Estate’s past track record and financial health. I highly recommend you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:

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.