Andritz AG's (VIE:ANDR) market cap surged €198m last week, retail investors who have a lot riding on the company were rewarded

Key Insights

• Significant control over Andritz by retail investors implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions
• 50% of the business is held by the top 14 shareholders
• Institutions own 31% of Andritz

A look at the shareholders of Andritz AG (VIE:ANDR) can tell us which group is most powerful. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are retail investors with 38% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

As a result, retail investors collectively scored the highest last week as the company hit €6.4b market cap following a 3.2% gain in the stock.

Let's delve deeper into each type of owner of Andritz, beginning with the chart below.

View our latest analysis for Andritz

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Andritz?

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 Andritz. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Andritz's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Andritz. Custos Vermögensverwaltungs GmbH is currently the company's largest shareholder with 31% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 3.7% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 2.8% by the third-largest shareholder.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 14 have the combined ownership of 50% in the company, suggesting that no single shareholder has significant control over the company.

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 Andritz

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.

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. Given we are not picking up on insider ownership, we may have missing data. Therefore, it would be interesting to assess the CEO compensation and tenure, here.

General Public Ownership

The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 38% stake in Andritz. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Private Company Ownership

We can see that Private Companies own 32%, of the shares on issue. It's hard to draw any conclusions from this fact alone, so its worth looking into who owns those private companies. Sometimes insiders or other related parties have an interest in shares in a public company through a separate private company.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Andritz better, we need to consider many other factors. Be aware that Andritz is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

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.