With 34% ownership in DO & CO Aktiengesellschaft (VIE:DOC), institutional investors have a lot riding on the business

Key Insights

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies DO & CO's stock price is sensitive to their trading actions
• A total of 7 investors have a majority stake in the company with 52% ownership
• Ownership research along with analyst forecasts data help provide a good understanding of opportunities in a stock

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If you want to know who really controls DO & CO Aktiengesellschaft (VIE:DOC), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. We can see that institutions own the lion's share in the company with 34% ownership. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn).

And last week, institutional investors ended up benefitting the most after the company hit €2.3b in market cap. The one-year return on investment is currently 25% and last week's gain would have been more than welcomed.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of DO & CO.

Check out our latest analysis for DO & CO

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About DO & CO?

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.

DO & CO already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. 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. 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 DO & CO's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in DO & CO. Attila Dogudan Privatstiftung is currently the company's largest shareholder with 30% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 5.2% and 4.4% of the stock.

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 7 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. 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 DO & CO

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.

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 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.

General Public Ownership

The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 31% stake in DO & CO. 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

It seems that Private Companies own 30%, of the DO & CO stock. 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:

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

I like to dive deeper into how a company has performed in the past. You can access this interactive graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow, for free.

If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its 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.