Retail investors account for 35% of International Workplace Group plc's (LON:IWG) ownership, while institutions account for 29%

editorial-team@simplywallst.com (Simply Wall St)

Tue, Nov 5, 2024, 10:05 PM 4 min read

If you want to know who really controls International Workplace Group plc (LON:IWG), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. With 35% stake, retail investors possess the maximum shares in the company. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

And institutions on the other hand have a 29% ownership in the company. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about International Workplace Group.

See our latest analysis for International Workplace Group

ownership-breakdown — LSE:IWG Ownership Breakdown November 6th 2024

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About International Workplace Group?

Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in International Workplace Group. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. But just like anyone else, they could be wrong. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at International Workplace Group's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

earnings-and-revenue-growth — LSE:IWG Earnings and Revenue Growth November 6th 2024

It would appear that 10% of International Workplace Group shares are controlled by hedge funds. That worth noting, since hedge funds are often quite active investors, who may try to influence management. Many want to see value creation (and a higher share price) in the short term or medium term. The company's CEO Mark Dixon is the largest shareholder with 25% of shares outstanding. Toscafund Limited is the second largest shareholder owning 10% of common stock, and Odey Asset Management LLP holds about 5.0% of the company stock.

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 6 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.

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 a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.

Insider Ownership Of International Workplace Group

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.

Our information suggests that insiders maintain a significant holding in International Workplace Group plc. It is very interesting to see that insiders have a meaningful UK£424m stake in this UK£1.7b business. It is good to see this level of investment. You can check here to see if those insiders have been buying recently.

General Public Ownership

With a 35% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over International Workplace Group. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important.

Many find it useful to take an in depth look at how a company has performed in the past. You can access this detailed graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

But ultimately it is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look at this free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future.

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.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.