What Is The Ownership Structure Like For St Barbara Limited (ASX:SBM)?

A look at the shareholders of St Barbara Limited (ASX:SBM) can tell us which group is most powerful. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership.

St Barbara isn't enormous, but it's not particularly small either. It has a market capitalization of AU$1.7b, which means it would generally expect to see some institutions on the share registry. In the chart below, we can see that institutional investors have bought into the company. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about St Barbara.

See our latest analysis for St Barbara

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About St Barbara?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in St Barbara. 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. 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 St Barbara's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. St Barbara is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Van Eck Associates Corporation with 11% of shares outstanding. The second and third largest shareholders are L1 Capital Pty. Limited and The Vanguard Group, Inc., with an equal amount of shares to their name at 5.0%.

A closer look at our ownership figures suggests that the top 16 shareholders have a combined ownership of 51% implying that no single shareholder has a majority.

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 St Barbara

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.

I can report that insiders do own shares in St Barbara Limited. It is a pretty big company, so it is generally a positive to see some potentially meaningful alignment. In this case, they own around AU$22m worth of shares (at current prices). It is good to see this level of investment by insiders. You can check here to see if those insiders have been buying recently.

General Public Ownership

With a 41% ownership, the general public have some degree of sway over St Barbara. 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:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand St Barbara better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for St Barbara you should know about.

Ultimately the future is most important. You can access this free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

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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