How Much Of Österreichische Post AG (VIE:POST) Do Institutions Own?

Every investor in Österreichische Post AG (VIE:POST) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.

Österreichische Post isn't enormous, but it's not particularly small either. It has a market capitalization of €2.4b, which means it would generally expect to see some institutions on the share registry. In the chart below, we can see that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. We can zoom in on the different ownership groups, to learn more about Österreichische Post.

Check out our latest analysis for Österreichische Post

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Österreichische Post?

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 Österreichische Post 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. 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 Österreichische Post's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Österreichische Post. Österreichische Beteiligungs AG is currently the company's largest shareholder with 53% of shares outstanding. This essentially means that they have extensive influence, if not outright control, over the future of the corporation. Marathon Asset Management, LLP is the second largest shareholder owning 3.2% of common stock, and Norges Bank Investment Management holds about 2.2% of the company stock.

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 Österreichische Post

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. 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.

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, with a 34% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Private Company Ownership

It seems that Private Companies own 53%, of the Österreichische Post 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:

I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Be aware that Österreichische Post is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this free report on analyst forecasts.

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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