A look at the shareholders of lastminute.com N.V. (VTX:LMN) can tell us which group is most powerful. We can see that private companies own the lion's share in the company with 56% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
Individual investors, on the other hand, account for 33% of the company's stockholders.
Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about lastminute.com.
Check out our latest analysis for lastminute.com
What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About lastminute.com?
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.
We can see that lastminute.com does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. 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. 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 lastminute.com, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.
Hedge funds don't have many shares in lastminute.com. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Freesailors Coöperatief Ua with 56% of shares outstanding. This essentially means that they have extensive influence, if not outright control, over the future of the corporation. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 1.9% and 1.5% of the stock.
Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. As far as we can tell there isn't analyst coverage of the company, so it is probably flying under the radar.
Insider Ownership Of lastminute.com
The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.
Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.
Our data cannot confirm that board members are holding shares personally. It is unusual not to have at least some personal holdings by board members, so our data might be flawed. A good next step would be to check how much the CEO is paid.